


The Pale Prince

by LaurelCanyon



Category: Uranian, Victorian Harem Literature
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:21:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23074663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurelCanyon/pseuds/LaurelCanyon
Summary: This is a intentional pastiche/combination of uranian and victorian Harem literature, set in a fantasy world in order to avoid the racist underones of the original works.  It is meant to be an enjoyable and forbidden romp with a style reminiscent of the more salacious examples of Victorian travel literature.  A young orphan finds his way in the world through a series of alternate turns of good and ill fortune.Note: I wrote this a while ago and always meant to look over it before posting but never did.  It's possible it has some errors or maybe even a character who changes names halfway through.  Comments will be monitored and mistakes will be corrected or explained if someone is confused.
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

My first memory is of the bleak morning road stretched up the hill toward the wretched village of Grantia. The sun was behind me, I suppose, though in the haze of the morning twilight it was not quite anywhere. The flat grass had just been uncovered from a winter of snow and had not yet recovered its color. The dirt of the road was half manure. The sky was smudged charcoal. The buildings ahead were clay. The world was brown.

My hands were bound because I had tried to run away. I lingered behind an old woman I did not know, who kept an aged but steady pace as the road unmercifully ascended. I remember I tried to sit down on the ground, but the unceasing tug of the rope kept me moving like a dog. I stumbled more than walked upward until we came to a man standing in the road.

"What is that, Yulka?" he motioned toward me with the staff he held in his hand. He had a thick brown beard and a bare tan chest. He wore a skirt of leather and a helmet of the same.

"Market goods, Sia," she said, "as if you can't tell."

"Slave market is gone, Yulka. You know that."

"There's still need though. You can't tell me there isn't."

"That's not for me to say. The irade says nay, praise to the emperor."

"Praise to his masters from the sea, more like it," she spat. "They don't care about this old woman or this boy. What am I to do with him?"

"Cut him loose. Leave him to the streets. Or the wolves."

"Pah! What wickedness. To deny an orphan a place in a rich man's household. How cruel the Intoahs are." I was pulling hard at my ropes and she responded by pulling back and I fell to the ground on my face.

Sia laughed but grabbed me by my bare forearm and helped me up. Then, and I don't think he had planned to do this, he took my other arm and knelt down to look into my face.

"Boy or girl?" he didn't wait for an answer but moved his first hand down my arm and then under my only piece of clothing, a heavy piece of burlap wrapped with string around my waist. He quickly found my tiny penis and stroked it only once from back to front. He stayed at my level but turned his head to Yulka. I was left staring at his fleshy hairy ear.

"He's cut, Yulka. Where did you get this?"

"Found him drowned on the beach."

"Not likely. Did your son grab him?"

Yulka's wrinkled face was silent.

"By Nyssoth, Yulka. Is this boy Intoah?"

"Nonsense. His face is alive," by which she meant I didn't look dead. To our people, the pale Intoahs look like walking ghosts.

"Aye, but look at how the color of his skin cowers against mine. He could be half. That's the riddle then. His mother is Intoah. She was able to keep him secret perhaps. Even mutilated his eleventh finger, as is their disgusting ritual. But now maybe he just got too big. There's four summers on him if there's one. Is that it boy?" He turned back to face me, "did your mother leave you with the town witch?"

"She could've come see me earlier if she didn't want him."

"If she was Intoah she's not from around here. We won't know unless this acorn tells us." He stared into my eyes. "Who are you belong to?"

I looked into his brown eyes. I remember the veins like a maze running in all directions across them. His hot breath smelled like smoke. It was better than the air around me. I said nothing. I remembered nothing. It was like I had been born when the sun came up that day.

"I'll take him, Yulka. He's off your hands."

"Since when could the night guard afford a boy?"

"Since selling boys became a crime. For your troubles, I won't report this to the Manor-Lord."

"He who has twenty boys?"

"All legally bought before the irade. But take him to my house and stay with him until I can come. I'll find you something."

Yulka stood unmoving for a moment but realized that "something" -- whatever it turned out to be -- was better than nothing. 

"and they call my family thieves," she muttered as she turned around. I kept my eyes fixed on the large man's face until the tug of the rope pulled me away. At first I was grumpy that I had to walk even more. Then I felt better because we were going downhill. 

Sia lived downhill from the village because many years ago he lived with Hooth, who was a fisher before he died. Since then, Sia had slept alone in the bed Hooth had made. I now shared that bed with him. For many nights I slept at the very edge of the bed like an animal leaned up against the bars of his cage. But as time passed and Sia let me be, I let myself roll in my sleep and after a time I would wake in the mornings sleeping on his chest. 

One of my most persistent memories of those early days was my cheek on his chest as I looked down on his naked body. In the mornings, I would wake before he did and stare at his cock straining up to the heavens like an idol. It seemed impossibly big to me, like it somehow broke laws of nature I only knew existed because of its defiance to them. It fascinated and perplexed me. I knew it wasn't always that big or that hard. I knew for most of the day Sia took control of this beast and wrapped it in a leather cage. Sia never gave any sign of worry or concern that this titan below his waist bothered or threatened him. This fleshy god was all powerful, but Sia was stronger still. I did not love Sia, but as he fed me and clothed me and never slapped me, I knew that he loved me.

I never took his love for granted, but having acquired the love of the man I took to be the greatest in the world, the opinion of any else in the world mattered not to me. Which is maybe, over time, why my opinion of the village men began to matter so much to them.

Sia's cottage was near the sea, which meant it was near the docks, where wheat was loaded from the hillside farms that circled the village. The swarthy sailors, with red faces and noses that were so encrusted with dead skin that they glinted in the sun like glass, would look around the desolate port for any fresh flesh to look at. Usually, they only found me. It was my intention most days to swim, but when a boat came to land I found it instantly interesting, and I would stand on the beach naked as stripped wood as the men did their work. Or on bolder days I would run onto the dock and with a leap send my bare legs on to the boat itself, twisting around the sweaty men as they did their work. They tried to catch me but they were distracted and I was quick, and soon they just let me be. 

"The beach ghost" they called me, because of my pale skin. Because it was true than I was lighter than everyone else in the village. Not as white as the Intoah (who I'd never seen but heard speak of in constant whispered curses), but fairer than any I knew. There were some sailors that may have been almost as light in their youth, but now they were covered in sunburn and splotchy moles. I too would have been even whiter than I was if not for my days in the sun and disregard for clothes except for warmth.

The restless sailors would take any excuse to leave the immediate docks and climb the hill to the little village where sat the only inn. I followed, or more often was carried by some rough but careful fellow. Whoever held me was eyed disdainfully and jealously by the rest of the company, and at the slightest whimper of mine the others would cry that I was being mistreated by the foul beast and must be handed over. I thus learned that if I looked resigned rather than eager to be carried, my body became a prize for men and I could set the rules in how to win me.

Down onto the table in the inn they'd set me, with the innkeeper making jokes that he hoped I'd get a splinter in my ass for wandering the town with not even a rag.  
"One like that, he'll get more than a splinter in his ass before too long," a particularly fat sailor once said. There was a stilted round of laughter, and I laughed too because I was a child and loved smiles around me, but there was also murder in some of their eyes and no one said such an explicit thing again.

So the men drank Raki and I stood on the tables and they sang to me and I danced, and the women of the village looked at the men and worried for me but they need not have feared. For though it was certainly possible that any one of them wanted me, none of them wanted anyone else to have me. I had a horde of would be rapists but also a horde of would be defenders, so I innocently and obliviously teased their flesh-starved eyes and their touch-starved hands. I was not shy with my hugs but never allowed a favorite, not hesitating with my kisses but never allowed a linger. And I was greedy, for I saw the more I demanded the more they wanted to please me.  
"What did you bring me?" I would giggle when they approached, whether or not I had ever seen them before.  
And the sailors, with their fiery eyes and their strong necks and bright-coloured shirts, were delighted and laughed back.  
"There's the ghost prince," they'd say. "Did you miss me?" To which I stared them in the face and just smiled without blinking. Though they knew me, in truth I never bothered to learn to tell one from another. But I wasn't fawned over by those who had no hope of winning my love, so I let them think I was always weighing running off with one of them.  
They began to bring me things no one else in the village had ever seen. Guilded sweetmeats, pickled fruits, berry preserves. I accepted these all with sparkling eyes as if it were a welcome but expected fee.  
If these sailors were my playthings though, the village guards were my friends. Sia's small company were both the voice of the empire and the local constabluary. Everything from keeping an eye on the sea for foreign invaders to wheat thieves to stolen bread fell under the domain of these brave men. They also served as the village's unofficial government, settling disputes on pricing or unkept promises whenever they arose. They had no desire to be hard on the village though for they themselves had grown up here as the children of the previous generation's guard. Now they had their own children and I was counted among them, though all knew I was Sia's boy but not his son.  
"He's not beloved to you, is he?" I once heard Nugh the day Guard ask Sia.  
"He is beloved."  
"But surely you do not share a bed?"  
"I have only one bed."  
"But," Nugh was a loss for words.  
"You mean is he to me as I was to Hooth?"  
"Yes."  
"No, Nugh. He has no where to go. If I came to him, how would I ever know his love from his fear?"

I spent the years this way, and I grew strong until I reached what we guessed was my eigth summer. On days when I felt like it, I would go fishing with the old men. Sia's only law was that I not be in a boat alone with a young man, a man who still had his strength. But the old men appreciated my help in tossing down and bringing up the nets, and then I'd take the catch and help them to split the fish open and spread them in the sun. But one day an old man took me in a boat by himself and he rowed out to a ship that had just left, where a perfume and spices merchant waited. He tossed his fishing net over me and before I understood, I was being hoisted in the air and onto the ship. A dozen hands grabbed me and took the net off of me and bound my hands and feet with rope. One of them threw a bag of gold back to the old fisher. The largest man, he may have been the fat sailor who once joked about my ass, carried me across the deck and into the quarters under the poop deck. He threw me on the bed and left the room.  
A second later, the merchant entered. He was an older man with a long white pointed beard and a long white pointed mustache. He wore green velvet robes and a belt of gold and rubies. As soon as he closed the door behind him, he began to undo this belt.  
"I noticed your pretty face," he said to me. "your bright eyes that sparkled for me when I passed." I recognized him, but I had never particularly made a point of attacting his attention. His face and hands were too smooth and unscarred. It made me not trust him.  
His belt was on the floor now and his robe hung open. It revealed a skinny body with no muscles or fat. His cock pointed toward me but gave me no fear. It was not like Sia's cock. It almost made me laugh.  
"I could have you this moment if I wanted and no one would care if you screamed."  
I didn't know what this meant. Did he plan on eating me? That thought did make me scared. He had caught me. Would he cut me open like the fish and leave me in the sun?  
"You should take me home now," I said. "The guards will be looking for me."  
"You go where you want, you idiot child," the merchant said. He approached me and straddled me on the bed across my chest and bound hands. His cock bounced on my chest and touched my chin. It was wet. "No one will look for you because no one cares."  
That couldn't be true.  
"If they cared, they'd stop all this slutting you do. You are a child whore, teasing your way into candy and treats. You don't even know what they want from you. Tell me, ghost, have you ever sucked a dick?"  
I shook my head. I hadn't even ever thought of it. But I smelled this old man's silly little thing and it smelled good. I bet Sia's would smell even better.  
"Suck my dick now and I'll let you go home. Do it well or else I'll ram it up your ass." He took two of his fingers and pried my tiny mouth open with them. Then as he held my lips apart he moved his cock up my chest. I felt his balls rub against me as he moved. Then he bent his knees at a little of a different angle and slid the tip of his cock between my small red lips.  
"Touch my cock with your tongue, slut. And mind your teeth." My throat felt dry and I tried to swallow. My teeth instinctively started to come together.  
"No, feeble boy. You do that again and I'll remove your head from your body before I fuck it. Now where is your tongue?"  
I thought about where my tongue was. For the first time in my life, I consciously thought about every individual part of my mouth and where it was in relation to each other and to the invader. I moved my tongue forward and timidly scraped his cock.  
"Good, slave. Now keep your tongue on me and move it from the bottom to the top of my cock." He was a little deeper in my mouth now. He had seemed so small compared to Sia, but now he seemed to take up my entire mouth. I didn't know how I was breathing. I only barely had room to wiggle my tongue across the bottom of his cock, up the round red side, and onto the top.  
"Now back down the other side."  
I did, and as soon as I did he thrust further into my mouth. My jaw seemed to fly open like it was broken, and I felt sure I was about to die. But after a moment he left my mouth completely, his tip lying on my forehead and his balls dangling over my lips. I coughed on them.  
"It's a good first lesson," he said. "Now take your tongue and lick whatever part of me I put on you."  
"Why?" I said. I was not upset at what he did to me until he almost choked me. Now I had tears in my eyes.  
"Because if you do, I will take you back to Sia."  
So I did. He lowered his hairy balls onto my mouth, and at first I kissed them like they were just another sailors cheeks.  
"Your tongue." He reminded.  
I stuck out my tongue and licked them like a dog. He grabbed me under the shoulders and slid my body up the bed only so much that I was under his shaft. Then he moved himself back and forth across my face and I licked his cock from the base up toward the tip. I did this for what seemed like forever. When I got tired or started to deny him my tongue, he'd grab my hair to remind me I had no choice.  
Then he moved back and sat on my chest, and I watched him put his own hand on his cock. He cupped his hand around it and began moving it back and forth very quickly. His legs tried to come together and he squeezed me from the sides.  
"look at me," he commanded, but it was more like a shriek. He was shaking, I thought maybe he was scared. But he looked happy. Then a white blob shot out and landed in my eye. It took me a second to realize it must have come from his cock.  
"You did ok, boy. I guess the rumors about you and Sia aren't true though. You look like you didn't even know a cock could do that."  
I didn't say anything to that. I just wanted to go home.

Of course the merchant wasn't going to just let me go home. Instead I spent a sea voyage tied to his bed, feet unbound to relieve myself over the side of the boat but hands never undone. He would put my bound hands around his neck and hold my legs and I would defecate over the railing. He seemed to enjoy that. I for my part became much less willing to try new things with him once I realized he was lying about taking me home. He seemed to know this and didn't try to enter me again. I did get used to his moaning and shaking and being covered in his white mess. Why didn't he do that over the side of the boat? He never let me clean it off, so I always felt it on my face. He fed me water and fish which he insisted on chewing first and then spitting into my mouth. I hated that, but I was hungry.

"I'm going to give you a choice," he said finally. "We are reaching the capital tomorrow. You can stay with me or I can sell you. I know its illegal now but I can do it without getting caught. If you stay with me, you must learn to be happy with me. I feed you and do not let you sleep in your own filth."  
"Just your filth." I had the nerve to say.  
"If I sell you, you are taking your chances. The man who buys you may treat you nicer, or he may not. He might not excite himself on top of you. He might flip you over and rip open your ass so that you start bleeding and never stop. He might throw you off a high cliff just to watch you fall. There is no way to know. Do you stay with me, or do you take your chance?"  
"I take my chance," I said without even thinking about it. "I'd rather die than smell your miserable cock again."  
The old man stormed out of the room at that, but returned a moment later with a sword whose blade was gold.  
"You insolent slut. You ungrateful calf. I am rich. I could have made you a prince. You will not leave this boat alive. I told you once I would fuck your corpse, and I will. But first I will fuck you until you beg me to slit your throat. He grabbed my arms and flipped me so hard I spun in the air. I landed on my chest and in an instant his finger was in my ass.  
"You are little and you will bleed," were the last words he ever said to me.

Just then a trumpet sounded.


	2. Chapter 2

Just then a trumpet sounded.  
The fat sailor burst into the room. It was the first time anyone but the merchant had entered the room and it startled me.  
"It's a patrol, lord. They mean to board."  
"Impossible," the merchant said. "Izzurghat knows what I will do to him if he sends his men after me."  
"It's not capital men, sir. It's Intoah."  
The merchant withdrew his finger from my ass and stood up.  
"Take your knife and kill the waif. Dump his body overboard. Be quick about it." Then he fled the room.

The fat sailor lifted me easier than a sack of wheat over his shoulder. We exited the room. For a moment I thought the ship was on fire. It was too bright and loud. I had been in a dark room for weeks.  
"By order of your emperor's treaty," I heard a voice "inspection of this vessel is required." Everyone on deck was scrambling. Whether to hide contraband or simply prepare for their guests, I do not know. The sailor took no time in running to the side of the ship opposite from the patrol. He sat me on the railing and had somehow already produced a knife in his hand. But rather than stabbing me, he cut the binds of my hands and then off my feet. He looked me in the eyes and muttered "swim, ghost" and then laid his huge hand across my naked chest. He pushed me backward and I fell into the sea.

I had no fear of water so my fall became a dive. Before I hit the waves I was able to see two things. First, a huge city not half a league full of towers and minarets. Second, beside the merchant vessel and the patrol, there was a third ship nearby. I was not wet before I decided I would swim there.

It was the height of summer and the water was warm and for a moment I already felt like I was home. But then my captivity caught up with me. My arms began to scream at the tax being placed on them after so long not even being able to stretch. My body ached at going so quickly from immobility to forced exertion. But I kept swimming. These were deeper waters than I was used to, and the waves were higher. I cursed how slowly I moved in this alien sea. When I let my head rise to look around, I was able to find the third ship again, but beyond that I was in a featureless world with nothing but water. But the ship was all I needed.

I pushed on and saw the water in front of me turning black and red. My left arm stopped listening to me and I began to swirl. I tried to surface but I went down instead. All was dark. Then Sia was beside me. He wrapped his arms around my waist and I knew he loved me. I drew my eyes up to his face and no face was there. His skull shone through strips of floating skin being eaten by tiny fish.

I woke up on a bed in a cabin. For a moment I thought I was back in the merchant's room. But the room was much, much larger. The walls were of a newer wood and there was a porthole on the wall. The bed was soft and as big as Sia's and I was wearing a long clean shirt. I lay there in my leisure for quite a time, thinking of Sia and the vision I had. I felt certain more horrors lay in my future, but for the moment I could avoid finding out what those were.

I was not disturbed as I lay there. I could hear the waves out the porthole and men walking above and beside my cabin. I knew that we were underway. I allowed myself to imagine the emperor had found me and was taking me back to Grantia. In my child's mind I not just allowed it, I convinced myself it was the only explanation. This unfounded optimism refilled my soul with energy and I gladly finally got out of bed. I opened the door and found my cabin was in a very similar spot as to the one on the other ship. It opened straight onto the deck of a ship much larger than the merchants had been. Magnificent sails billowed in a stable wind and the sea breeze welcomed me back to life.  
"The child has awakened, sire." One of the sailors called. Sire? The emperor himself must be on board. A moment later I spied a beautiful young man only slightly more than twice my age walking toward me. He wore gold and red robes and had a red beard, the only red beard I'd ever seen. When I saw him, I felt I understood the word "beauty" for the first time. He smiled when he reached me.  
"Are you well, child?" he asked. To my ears, his voice sounded like music.   
"I wish to see my home."  
"You were stolen by Izgak the merchant? I saw his man push you over."  
I supposed he was right but I did not answser. Another man approached us and asked me "where do you hail from, child?" This man was older than the red beard and had a rougher face, but eyes that were just as gentle. He had a wide nose and a thick black beard. He reminded me of every sailor in Grantia who had ever given me candy. I suddenly felt sorry I had taken them all for granted.   
"I want to go to Grantia."  
At that the eyes of both men dropped and they looked at each other with despair.  
"Let us sit," said the red beard in fine robes, "above or below deck?"  
It took me a moment to realize he was asking me.  
"In the light and wind," I said. And so we climbed the steps to the highest deck and were brought wooden stools. My legs were still wobbly and I was glad to get off of them again. I told my story as best as I could to the two men, who nodded as if they had heard similar ones before.  
"I cannot take you to Grantia, sea-child" he said. "For it is gone."  
"Then take me to one who can, my emperor."  
The captain smirked. The red beard laughed.  
"I'm not the emperor, young one. I am Prince Irlik of Caffree, a land lost to the Intoah. Though I would take you to the emperor himself if he could help you. But no one can return you to that which is burnt."  
"Burnt?" I asked. "What burnt?"  
"You are so young," he said quietly His hand rose and with compassion he touched my cheek. "How old are you?"  
"Sia says I have seen eight summers."  
"Are such things counted from the beginning or the end of the summer? The ways of the northfields are mostly unknown to me."  
"The longest days, the warmest ones" was my only answer. I spoke it as if it was an obvious point.  
"Yes, boy, but the summer wanes." the captain asked me roughly. "Does that make you eight or nine now?"  
The prince saw confusion on my face and put up his hand to the captain. "It does not matter." He turned to me and touched my cheek again. He silently impelled me to look into his eyes. When I did, he smiled once more. But his words were grim.

"These are hard days for you. You must try to understand. About the time that you were born, a great war ended. The Emperor boldly and valiently defended our lands from the Intoah, but the Intoah have ships we cannot match. They approached the capital and demanded surrender. They blockaded our ports and cut off our shipping routes. And in doing so they by strangulation did what they could not do in open, honorable batter. They demanded the empire give up our farmlands, be reliant on buying our grain from them. The citizens of our large city are innumerable. The land around them is spent. For centuries they have relied on the outer provinces for their wheat. (I see impatience in your eyes but I would rather not have you think I am keeping anything from you.) My province of Caffree served the empire nobly and openly by providing wheat to the cities. And so the Intoah demanded my entire province be given to them. The people of the Northfields, Grantia and the other dotted villages on the languid penisula, were told to leave their lands and return to the mainland empire. The better part of a decade was granted to them. But the people did not listen and continued to provide wheat for the empire, so we would not make our enemy stronger with our hunger.   
"The Intoah came to our emperor and informed him that they were set to burn the entire penisula. The emperor pleaded with them to give time for the people to be saved, but the Intoah said they had wasted the time already given. And so they set off from the capital two niems ago. From your tale, the merchant was probably just ahead of them and caught wind of the news. Hate him as you will, but that old man saved your life."  
"Well now I shall save Sia's," I responded, unwilling to grasp what the prince was saying.  
"Grantia is the southernest of the Northfields," the captain said as if that would convince me of anything. I looked at him and then back at the prince. The prince took my hands.  
"It's where the Intoah would first destroy, child. There would have been no warning."  
I was at a loss for what to say. I only barely understood everything he had just said. But I knew Sia was ok. Of course he was. How could only I see this?  
"There might be refugees being pushed into the mountains," the captain offered hesitantly to the prince.  
"Perhaps," the prince shook his head. "but we dare not travel there until the Intoah are done. A prince of the empire in those waters would look like open defiance. We would risk the life of the emperor. No, we shall continue to Izzik, as the emperor has commanded."

And so I was again imprisoned onboard a ship, though this time I had the run of the vessel. The room I awoke in was the prince's quarters. Straight below that was the captain's. The rest of the crew, two-score in number, slept in hammocks or on the floor in the same hold that held food, water, and supplies. I was allowed to sleep where I would, which meant I mostly climbed up to the crow's nest and fell asleep staring at the stars. It was then that I could most fully pretend I was home.

The prince would not allow me to go around unshod as I had been used to, but various attempts to alter or belt sailors pants failed, so I spent my days in the prince's long shirts. It felt miserably constrictive and hot to me, though the material was light. I simply was not used to being covered so. I took it off whenever I thought I could catch a moment alone at night.

I was lying naked on the side deck late at night, confident that in the darkness those on duty would not make out my still form. The captain, who I thought had been asleep, sat down next to me.

"Why do you throw off the generosity of our prince, rude thing?" He whispered. "Those shirts are finer than anything even I wear."  
"The sky is finer still," I said.  
"Did no one ever tell you that you are a beauty? A white pearl on a beach of sand and shit?"  
"No," I said. In truth I had been told of my beauty many times, but not exactly in those words.  
"What do you do when you see a shiny thing? You take it. As you were taken." He pulled out a small worn bag from around his neck. "In this bag I keep the white teeth of a boy I once loved. These teeth have no value to anyone but me, but if people were to see the bag they would try to take it from me. So I keep it covered under my clothes. Do you understand? Flaunt your treasures and they will not be yours for long."  
And with that he arose and went back to bed. I lay there until I was sure he was gone, and then I put on the prince's shirt.

Izzik was an island off the coast of the Farloft cape. Once, before the empire, it had been the home of a great city. Then a volcano awakened and covered most of the town. An ancient palace on the very edge of the island still remained, and it was maintained by the empire as the most northern lookout not counted among the northfields. The palace was staffed for the pleasure of princes on holiday and fed by fishers, but had no set government beyond the steward of the property. Irlik had come to take residence of the place as long as the Intoah were in northfields, to monitor their progress as much as possible and wait for word of refugees.

The palace was ancient and completely made of stone, but had become a favorite holiday spot for nobles and so was kept as comfortable as possible. Still, the prince viewed his sojourn as a dutiful watchman. There was little to be done once he arrived and his residency set up, but he awoke every morning and watched the shores. He sent out his captain and his ship on regular patrols, reaching as far noth as they dared to look for signs of destruction or survival. He ordered the permanent servants of the palace be prepared to receive any number of villagers should any turn up. But in truth there was not much to be done but wait for people that most likely would never come.

I spent my days staring at the sea as well, having mad dreams of throwing myself into the ocean and swimming all the way to Grantia. I saw not the concern that the prince, in truth everyone on the island, had for me. I saw them only as jailers complicit in a wicked conspiracy to keep me from my Sia. Then one day, after only two full moons (it seemed like a lifetime of suffering to me), the prince approached me.  
"Our captain thinks it safe to say the Intoah are done. My next task would be to send him to Grantia. I want to let you go with him, but you must not have any hope."  
"I will not need hope when I have Sia," I said. He sighed, but let me go.

I was not happy about being on board a ship yet again. I had gotten used once more to the unending beaches of a seashore home. But the voyage was not long this time and the day came when we reached Grantia at dawn.

I thought we were in the wrong place. There was nothing left. The dock was gone. Completely vanished. Only poles sticking out of the water. The captain led a landing party and he let me come. We landed where the old men and I would flay the fish. A little up the road should've been Sia's house. I ran to it and stared. It was all wrong. It was gone. His house, his bed, where he and I shared the nights and he had shared the nights with another before me. The path up the hill. The fields on either side were ruined, burnt so they looked like coal fields instead of farmland. The village on the top of the hill gone too. The Intoah had left nothing.  
"Where are the villagers?" one of the sailors said.   
"Not here," was the captain's only reply.  
I fell down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new life

I didn't want to stay but my legs wouldn't leave. They carried me back to the beach and onto the rowboat. Once back on board ship, they put me in the prince's quarters. I staid there for most of the remainder of the journey as the ship made its way up the coast, finding the same thing at every village. I went on deck only to make my way to food or to relieve myself. Then one day as I was returning sullenly to the room, there was a cry from the crow's nest. I turned my head to the sea and saw another ship. This one was strange and alien, glinting like smokey glass. There was instant fear in everyone's eyes. I didn't have to be told that this was the Intoah. A series of flashes came from the distant ship, like tiny stars on its hull.  
"What's that?" a sailor said.  
"It's how those bastards give us orders," another replied. "They're saying don't approach, most likely. They never want us to get a good look at their ships. They'll come here and ask us what the hell we are doing here."

Sure enough, a small boat emerged from somewhere in the distant ship and began to make its way toward us at the speed of a dolphin. There were only two men on board and neither of them were rowing, so how the ship moved remained a mystery. One of them stayed on board and the other one climbed up a ladder of ours and presented himself to the captain. I stood nearby to listen.

Now I understood why they called the Intoah ghosts. His skin was whiter than fish bones. I could not see his hair, for he wore a large black hat that matched his black robes.  
"I am Captain Yunt, in service to my Prince Irlik. My vessel is at your service," our captain said. He said "service" the same way he said "Intoah" in private -- as a curse. He kept his head lowered and talked to the Intoah man's waist.  
"I am Lord Reginar Millfort of the Intoah Sea Service. I wish for you to state your business in these waters."  
"We have no business, my Lord," the captain replied. "We have concerns for our countrymen. These are your lands, sir, and we wished only to clean our refuse from them."  
"Your countrymen are no more. The men and women were executed for crimes against your own empire because of their disobedience to the treaty your own emperor signed. Your children were liberated from their disgusting care and have been sent to schools."  
"We thank you, sir, for the rescue of the children. We have prepared a place where we may gather them unto us."  
"My god, man, do you think me an idiot? Didn't you hear what I said? They are orphans. I know what you savages do with orphans. Sell them and sleep with them. No, I think not. They will be taught manners and graces and have the prestigious opportunity to serve in our finest households. It is an honor unequal to anything you could provide."  
"My lord, my people do not sell orphans any longer. It has been forbidden for years."  
"Oh, and whose child is that then?" And with that he pointed to me, munching on a piece of bread and wearing only a sun-bleached long shirt. "I know of no use for a child that small on such a ship except for one thing. I should take him with me rather than let him be buggered by you lot night after night." And the Intoah actually began to stride toward me, his hand extended as if to grab me.  
"He is the son of prince Irlik, my lord," the captain cried. "He wished for an adventure. It is forbidden for anyone to touch the son of a prince," he paused for a second and then riskily added "even you."  
The man stopped. I would learn later that the treaty between our people did indeed prevent any molestation or violence toward anyone of noble birth. That promise was how the Intoah had convinced the emperor to agree to such a one-sided surrender rather than fight to the death.  
The Intoah turned back to face the captain. "Well. Now that you have your answer, you may leave these waters. In our generousity we have redeemed the children of an entire province. It is at no small expense to us. Make sure your prince understands that any inconveniances to our plans may force us to reconsider the childrens' fates."  
He left without another word. I ran to the captain and held his hand. The Intoah had scared me, and on seeing the face of my enemy I understood how real he was. 

That night, I did not retire to the prince's empty chamber but knocked on the door of the captains.  
"What the hell is it?" he asked and opened the door to find me. He looked down at me and I looked up at him and without blinking or breaking gaze, threw off my shirt.  
"What's this, child? Hide your jewels."  
"Hide them from those who would take them. Not from those to whom they belong," I said.  
"You're a seed, not a tree. Not a sapling even. When you take the fruit too soon, it never blooms again." And with that he closed the door on me. I put my shirt back on and retreated to what I now thought of as my bed. But in the morning I left my room to find him and he let me hold his hand.

======================

Back in Izzik, the prince was decisive but resigned.  
"I shall stay here, my friend," he said to the captain, whose hand I still held. The three of us sat together on the palace's grand porch, a large platform with an ancient mosaic on the floor and low crumbling walls. "I have no other place that I need go and I'm not on home on the sea as you are. You must return to the emperor and tell him what we know."  
"And what of Sia?" I spoke insistently.  
"Flower of my heart," the prince said "Sia is gone."  
"I saw him in the water. When I swam to your ship and I slid under the waves, he caught me up."  
"That was me, child" the captain said. "I dove in and rescued you."  
"Then you were Sia?" I asked. Don't seek to understand why I said such a thing, I did not know then nor do I now.  
"No," was all he said. The prince looked back and forth between the captain and myself and thought it best to change the subject.  
"The questions remains, little heaven, who do you wish to go with? You may stay with me if you like."  
"I will go with the captain," I said and gripped his hand tighter. I put my other little hand onto his hair-covered arm.  
The captain let go of mine and pulled away. "I will not have you. I have no need for an infant on board my ship."  
My face turned red as if I had been slapped. What did I do wrong?  
"I spoke out of turn then," the prince said. "A captain is the prince on his own ship, at least when a prince is not there."  
"I'll work," I insisted, fighting back tears to speak. "I'll do watch out and clean anything and I'll wear whatever clothes you tell me." The captain's own cheeks went red. But with anger or heartache I could not tell.  
"He's already lost one father, Yunt," the prince suggested in a tone that sounded more casual than it really was.   
"It's not a father he wants of me," the captain responded.  
The prince gave a half smile and wobbled his head, the way the southern provincers do to mean they see both sides. "At his age, they want a champion. The champion determines the price for protection. Just because he offers coin doesn't mean you must take it."  
"My prince, I would only say this to you. I do want that coin. I have wanted it since our skin first touched in the waters off the coast. I would have killed if the Intoah had tried to take him away. I would have died. If I am offered the coin again, I will take it. But it is not done being forged, and the coin will melt in my hands and destroy him and burn me."  
"So tell him you will return." The prince said. The captain stared at the prince as if the man had just revealed to him the secrets of the gods. Then the large black bearded hairy man got down on one knee in front of me and clasped my little hands in his. All four lay on my lap, and my little cock felt the very edge of his knuclke.  
"You are a true wonder, little water-seed. I would not leave you if you were to come to harm. But the prince loves you and you shall be safe here. You will not understand this, but I leave you now because I want you to know yourself before you know anyone else. When the seed becomes a sapling, I will return and ask you if you still want me."  
"how long will that be?" I whimpered.   
"If I were strong, I would wait until you have a thick trunk. But I am not, so I will wait until you have a thin sprout. In two years, I will return and you will tell me how close you want us to be."

The captain left the next morning and I sat naked on the rocks to defy him as he left. To my understanding, all I had asked was that he take me with him. The desires of men cloud their understanding and add intention to others that are not there. The prince was right that I would have done anything the captain asked of me, but what there was to ask eluded me. I wondered if perhaps the captain would have asked me to wind my tongue around his cock the way I did with the merchant. Or maybe of lying between his legs as the captain stroked his cock and I breathed him in. Yes, I would have done either of those things and loved it. If the captain and I both wanted such a thing, I didn't understand why it was wrong. It angered me that he would make both of us unhappy this way. I had always been happy with Sia and he had always been happy with me.

Sia had been happy with me, hadn't he? I thought back to the merchant, How his cock would grow when he wanted me. How when he was his happiest his cock would explode and then shrivel. 

But what of Sia? Those mornings, lying on Sia's chest, staring at his giant tower of a cock., I watched and wondered as I watched his cock grow, but I never saw it explode or shrink. Did that mean he wanted me to make him happy, and I hadn't? Should I have reached out and stroked it the way the merchant stroked his own? Would he have shivered and shook if I put my lips on his unsheathed helmet? Did I keep him from being happy?

But he never asked me to do those things. Why? Why lie there in desire if I was right there? Did he not know about those things, like I hadn't? Or, like the captain, did he think that I was not ready? I resolved on the beach that day, my own little cock hard between my legs as I thought about the bodies of the men I had loved, that when the captain returned I would show him I was more than just a seed.

"You're naked again, little one. It's time we dressed you as a prince," Prince Irlik said when I returned to the palace. "The Intoah do have long memories. If they were to show up here, you would have to convincingly act as my son."  
"Your protection is worth its price," I said, consciously echoing his own words.  
"My protection, now? Is the captain so far gone from your memory already?"  
"He left me to you, didn't he, my lord?"  
"So he did," the prince said with his easy smile. " my price is that you dress the part."

So my days of bare legs were finally at an end. Instead I was covered with the clothes of a noble: white silk leggings, leather shoes, and a velvet tunic. The clothes felt funny but exciting against my body. The leggings reach all the way up my legs and scraped across my tiny testicles covered by my tunic. I was supposed to wear linen breeches under the tunic but as no one could tell unless I spread my legs, I never did. 

The guards taught me some basics of sword-fighting and even how to load a pistol, which was a strange metal weapon I had never heard of before. Pellets and powder were thrust down the throat, and then an explosion shot forth toward an enemy. I learned how, but never enjoyed it.

The prehistoric palace was immense and mostly empty, so I spent quite some time wandering through its halls. It was not dark, for there were constant windows and skylights cut in perfect squares right through the stone. The prince's own apartment had his quarters, a bath, a dining room, and a giant hall for performances. The servant's apartments were set up much the same way, though the second performance hall had been turned into a kitchen. The third and fourth apartments were identical but unused, though once when I was exploring I heard voices in the darkness. I crept up quietly and peered around the corner. I saw the palace cook with his breeches down leaning against a wall, and on his knees before him was a scullery maid. His cock was in her mouth and her head was bobbing back and forth. Even tough her tongue must have been touching her cock, it reminded me more of the stroking motion the merchant had made with his hand. I reached under my own tunic and began stroking my own little cock, matching her speed. I began to tense up and had a hard time standing, but I didn't want to stop. I quietly descended to my knees and realized that I was not so much pretending that I was the cook but that I was the maid. After a few minutes, the cook began to squeal like a chipmunk. I stifled a giggle that would have been heard except the maid let out a gagged laugh at the same time. But she kept going and his squeals became groans and then all at once he fell to the floor, she still kneeling there between his legs. Then they kissed for a while and I quietly went down a corridor and through a door.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lessons in pleasing

Irlik's old tutor, Hahg, was sent for in order to teach me of the empire, and so by midwinter when the days were cooler I spent more time inside than out. Hahg told me how a decade ago, when Irlik was only a little older than me, his father died in the final battle against the Intoah. Irlik's father Prince Nyss had been the lynchpin of opposition to making peace with the Intoah. Nyss was known throughout the empire as an honest and wise man, who saw how the Intoah promise of peace was a doorway to eternal slavery. Caffree was the southern center of arts and sciences, second only to the capital in its devotion to its people. Though the bulk of the land and the people were devoted to farming, Nyss was devoted to the people and to doing whatever he could so that they reaped in the culture benefits of the food they helped provice. He believed in the ancient principle that no one knew a family better than the father, but introduced the appeal of blood so that any child -- any child -- who could demonstrate that their father had made them bleed could request that the prince question the father. The caring of orphans was paramount on his mind as it was for most nobles of the empire, and he did what he could to make sure they were sold for a great price to stable households. The Intoah do not let orphans be bought but only given, which cruelly makes the orphans worthless. Requiring a high price for an orphan ensured that the orphan was treated as a treasure instead of as refuse.

This was an important point to Hahg, because he felt that such truths were being lost due to the influence of the Intoah. In the few short years since the criminalization of selling orphans, he told me, young people were already celebrating the end of the practice.   
"These young people never had to be an orphan like you or I were," he told me. "They have believed the Intoah lies that money makes one a slave. Well, boy, everyone is a slave to someone. A son is a slave to his father. His father is slave to a prince. The prince is slave to the emperor."  
"The emperor is slave to the Intoah." I suggested. Hahg looked at me like I had insulted his mother.  
"No, never. And to say such a thing is blasphemy, so do not speak it again. But in this private moment I understand why you would say such a thing. When you buy an orphan, he is no longer an orphan. He is your servant, in your household. He has re-entered the great chain of hierarchy, and has done so at a higher place than he was before, because he has been shown to be valuable. As you are."  
"No one ever paid for me," I said. "The first thing I remember is Sia refusing to pay for me."  
"But don't you think he would've, if the Intoah had let him?"  
I shrugged.  
"Because of them, you will never know. They ruin our lives and then they use the ruin as an excuse to think less of us. When they don't just kill us."

Once Ness was dead, the fight went out of all the people. "Why continue to lose the best of us?" the emperor's wise men told him. In truth they were afraid for themselves. So the emperor traded the safety of his people for the safety of the nobles.

"This is not to be scorned," Hahg said. "The people live to serve the nobles as the nobles live to serve the emperor as the emperor lives to serve the gods. The people are the blossom, numerous and ever changing. The princes are the limbs, important but many. The emperor is the trunk. Cut off the leaves and they shall grow again. Cut off the emperor and nothing of us will survive."

After the negotiations, Irlik and his mother had been sent into exile. They moved into aparments in the capital where they came to know the emperors own family better, but tensions slowly arose. Irlik's mother was not one to hold her tongue, and used to speak to the queen of the cowardice of the emperor. The queen understood the danger of the times and would not resort to petty drama over mere words, and so she spoke nothing of this to the emperor. But word began to leak that Nyss's widow was a blasphemer. The emperor himself did know, but for years actively blocked people from telling him about it because of his love for Nyss. Finally, when the Intoah came to the capital and announced their intention to destroy the northfields, Irlik's mother went to the common marketplace and before a crowd began to decry the emperor as a coward. The city guard had no choice to lock her away. Because of her position, they put her in Argrod's tower.

"What is Argrod's tower?"  
"Argrod was a widow who killed her own son rather than have him enter the service of the emperor. The judges ruled that murder for this reason was to claim that we did not owe the emperor our devotion, and thus it was called blasphemy. The law states that a man may be killed for blasphemy. But only a husband may carry out such a sentence on his wife. This is another way in which we are more civilized than the Intoah, for who is more likely to show mercy to a woman than her husband? But where there is no husband, and the deed is obvious, the woman must decide for herself if she should die. And so a tower was built on the city wall with a grand bedroom. Argrod was locked up there. Every day, one guard could ascend the stairs and enter the locked room with food and whatever else she requested while she sought the will of the gods. She could never leave except by means of a large open window that looked out onto the ocean. Argrod was sure that she was just in her actions and lived in that tower for 17 years before entrusting her soul to the gods and falling to her self-determined death."  
"And Irlik's mother?"  
"When they brought her up into the room atop the tower, without even stopping she walked across the room and through the window. Irlik and the emperor counseled together that night. Some thought one or the other would be dead in the morning. Instead, he was sent to Issik where now we dwell."

When I next saw Irlik, I saw him different than I had before. Issik was not his home any more than it was mine. He had no family anymore than I did. He was not just a prince, he was an orphan. And I was not just an orphan, he had made me a prince. And yet he never seemed to grieve. The ship that had brought Hahg from the capital had also brought a troupe of musicians and dancing boys who were to set up permanent residence for the purpose of being called upon to perform at a whim. The youngest of the boys were about my age, but had seen a very different life from mine. I envied their performance. One night I saw between Hahg and Irlik as they watched the youths spin and bend to a cacophany of demon-sounding horns. Hahg reached his hand behind me and touched Irlik's cheek and it was only then that I realized Irlik would have been my age when Hahg was Irlik's.

A full fete this night was, with feasting and dancing. Around the perimeter of the hall sat all the higher servants of the prince and the palace, as if playing fellow nobles. Servants at this level came from a variety of sources. Many of them had once been favorites of a noble, and as a reward for love and service in youth was granted the promise of a lifetime of care in exchange for moderate and honored service to a prince. Men at this level were dressed in such a way as to honor the properity of the house they served. Flowing robes half covered embroidered garments, with beauitiful cashmere shawls around their waists. The lower servants served wine and coffee and pastries, and carried around trays with jewell-encrusted pipes, offering strange drugs to anyone brave enough to try them. Young women in purple carried large bowls of fruit on their head, bowing impressively to the ground in order to offer their treats.   
The troupe of boys not only danced but also sang, high mysterious songs in ancient tongues that felt like they were calling forth spirits. Drums and cymbols beat seemingly at random, but the boys moved to the sounds effortlessly. They wore light pink fabrics that were see-through wherever there was less than two laters, which was most places. The boys were more "wrapped" than clothed. But the bindings inhibited not their movements, and they bounded and slid across the floor, over and under each other and sometimes fiercely grabbing at each other like animals.   
The centerpiece of this performance was boy named Hiral, who I had seen disembark and had instantly dislike. He had come off the ship wearing nothing but a silk scarf wrapped around his dark waist, just barely covering his ass and groin. He blew kisses at every sailor and servant whose eyes met his, and he impertently did not look down when his betters walked by. He looked so careless, I was sure he would be a horrible dancer. I was waiting for him to mess up and I would laugh. But he did not. He danced in the front of his fellow performers, making the highest leaps and bending his body under those who made the lowest. He spun on his bare feet with his hands up and a smile on his face. His breast heaved constantly but gracefully as he pushed tremendous amounts of air through his body, but he never glistened in sweat. As the music went on, he gradually left his companions and danced closer and closer to the prince. He wore a necklace of reflective metal coins, that made a clink and caught the firelight as he shaked his shoulders and stuck out his chest. He had a snarling smile on his face as he stared straight ahead. I thought it was a rude to look at the prince. Then suddenly the cymbols made a loud bang and he was on the floor, his entire body slithering back and forth like he had become a snake. And yet he kept his eyes on the prince. I looked at Irlik and saw him grinning and entranced.  
Hiral moved his head back and forth with raised eyebrows and a tongue across his lips, as if he was sending Irlik some secret message. Then instantly he was on his knees, legs spread, and his entire body arched back so the top of his head almost but not quite touched the floor behind him.  
Irlik dropped his coffee. A servant began patting it off of him while the prince barely noticed and continued to watch.  
Hiral rejoined the rest of the troupe, but continued with every move and cycle to keep his eyes on Irlik. The dancing winded down by having the dancers one by one slowly backing away from the group and melting into the shadows. As they did, some of the men got up and followed them. When Hiral left, everyone looked at the prince. He stayed seated, but everyone knew that Irlik was not one to go chasing a boy like some mad man. Irlik excused himself from the party at the proper time. The next morning Hiral was seen leaving the prince's apartment.

Hiral came and went to the prince's apartment often after this. I wondered that perhaps he had been called beforehand and I simply had not noticed. But now I did, and I hated him. That the prince would pay attention to any boy other than me never even crossed my mind. I thought about how back in Grantia the other boys were invisible to the sailors while I was not. But then again, the other boys wanted to be. They had fathers and mothers and things to do other than seduce sweets from strangers. They never played with me, and I wondered if they felt about me the same way I now felt about Hiral. That he was . . . bad somehow. A trickster. Using his body to make people love him. When the prince should love me.  
"Hiral is a blasphemer," I told Hahg. "He does not know his place."  
"Oh?" asked Hahg.  
"Yes. He mocks natural order. He makes the prince his slave."  
"Because the prince pays attention to him, that makes the prince his slave?"  
I nodded.  
"And you would rather him be your slave, I suppose."  
I pursed my lips.  
"You're jealous, little prince. You were fine to ignore the prince until he found someone else to play with. Meanwhile, he thinks you care only for Yunt. If that has changed, you must tell him."  
I felt stung. Had I so quickly forgotten about Yunt? No, I had not. If he were to appear today, I would run to him. More than that, I would get on my knees and try my best to make him squeal like the cook did that day in the empty corridor. But Yunt was far away, and I . . . I didn't know what I wanted.  
"Hiral is cheating," I finally said, though cheating at what I wasn't sure. "He is a dancer and can move ways I can't. It's like the spell of a demon. We must rescue the prince."  
Hahg laughed at this, "the only way to fight magic is with more magic. Do you want me to teach you magic?"  
"Yes."

Our lessons changed after this. We spent our time not on history and palace intrigue, but on what Hahg called "The art of seduction."  
"The boys of the troupe do not spend their days playing and traipsing as you do. Have you noticed you never see them about? They have an entire bath devoted to them, and they spend hours in there every day. They avoid sweat. They remove stink. They shave and pluck their hairs almost hourly. They do not last long if their troupe leader sees the beginnings of a beard. Are you prepared for that?"  
"I have no beard."  
"Not now. But you will. You must think about how long you want to compete with these boys. For they are constantly being replaced, but you will grow older."  
"Once I win the prince, he will be mine."  
"I once thought the same thing, little one. I taught Irlik the ways of love, and thought that he would love me forever. But I only opened his eyes to the joys of the flesh, and since then his eyes and hands have forever wandered. He is always kind, but never faithful. Don't approach him not knowing this."

Hahg sat on a stool naked before me. I kneeled before him. I had thrown my tunic off but kept the leggings on because they were a pain. His erect cock was before me.  
"This is the length of the sword," he said and with his pinkie stroked the underneath of his shaft, where a vein ran. "You touch it, and it will give pleasure. Here is where you start, not because it is the most but because it is the least."  
He took my hand and placed it on the underside of his cock. I felt excited because I was realizing I loved cocks. Not his in particular, though I also didn't hate it the way I came to hate the merchants. He manipulated my fingers so only two of them pointed out and stroked his underside from tip to base. Then he took my fingers and had me cup him near the balls.  
"If you squeeze right, you can keep an excited man excited longer. That takes practice, though. For now lets get this member in your mouth. Show me what you know." I let go of his cock but he grabbed my hand and put me back on. "No, use your hand."  
My mouth approached his cock slowly. His hair was gray and his cock was cut, like mine. Was the prince's? Sia's hadn't been. Neither had the merchant.  
"Well?" the tutor asked. I opened my lips and slid his helmet into my mouth. I ran my tongue from the bottom to the top of his tip, and then down again the other side.  
"Good boy," he said calmly. "Not bad at all. Now focus on sucking that helmet. It's where most of the pleasure is. Think about licking every little spot. It doesn't need to stay in your mouth the whole time."  
I began to roll it around in my mouth. It did feel good there. Then Hahg's hand was on the back of my head. I got scared, afraid he would try to choke me. But instead he gently guided me off of his cock.  
"Remember, lick all around." So with it just barely out of my mouth, I started to lick. I backed up for a second and looked at the helmet. Really looked at it. I was close enough that I could see his cock had little tiny lines and bumps on it. I imagined it was my job to lick every sinhle one of those tiny features. I started a rhythm where I would give a slightly different spot two or three licks, then put the whole helmet in my mouth just long enough for one or two sucks. Hahg laughed at that. "clever child," he said.

After a minute of that, he pulled my head back off of him and guided my tongue toward the length of the sword again. "It may be less sensitive, but every part of your prince will be owed your devotion." He held it up for me and I licked the underside of his cock, working all the way back to the balls and all the way front.   
"Now finally, you have to learn to trust your prince, so you must trust me. Will you trust me?"  
I nodded. We'd gone this far, hadn't we?  
He grabbed my hair and pushed his cock into my mouth. I was terrified. But he didn't go too deep. Just deep enough so that he was in charge of exactly what the back of my tongue was touching. He rocked my head back and forth, pulling my head and my mouth across his cock. In an out of me he went, in and out. Only the very tip stayed in at all times.   
"You are doing well," he said breathelessly, "but you are loose. You will have to learn to breather with your nose so that your mouth feels like a cunt."  
I didn't know what a cunt was, but now wasn't the time to stop and ask. He pulled and pushed me against his cock faster and faster. Then all at once he pushed me entirely off.  
"Its not a bad start," he said. "You'll learn. But lets finish with your hands."  
He got off his stool and lay down on the floor. I was still kneeling beside him. He guided one of my little hands onto his balls, and the other back into a ring around his shaft. Then he started moving my ring hand up and down. He gave me no choice in the matter, but I was fascinated. He moved my up and down, his hand on top of mine, faster and faster against his cock. His face became red and he stopped looking at me. He closed his eyes and began to moan. He whispered the name "Irlik," but how could I mind that? Weren't we both imagining him? Faster and faster he continued to go and my arm felt like rubber. Then all at once he stopped and the white goo sprung out of him like water from a blowhole. It arced and landed on my shoulder. It was a good thing I had taken off my tunic.

He lay quietly for a few minutes.  
"You have natural talent," he said. "More talent than Irlik did at the start. Probably more than he has now."  
"Is this what Irlik likes?"  
He lifted himself onto his elbows. "Irlik likes that he is a prince. Like all great men, he cares more about the heart of submission of his subjects. But I think you will please him."  
"The merchant" I spoke haltingly "the merchant put his finger in my ass. Will Irlik do that?"  
"He may. He may want to put his cock in your ass. What do you think about that?"  
"The merchant said it would bleed."  
"It might. It would if he were to do it now. I think Irlik would wait until you are a little bigger."  
"Bigger like Haril?"  
"Yes. It is not something that really can be taught. Oh I can show you how to open wider, but you are so small. Your best technique would be to become so good at pleasuring him with your mouth that he doesn't even look elsewhere. But if it happens, it happens. You'll survive. And you'll know you are his."

Hahg would have had me his pupil forever, I knew, and would not tell me when it was time for me to move toward the prince. I was impatient and restless, but my rival stood in my way. For when not many days after I went to the prince's apartment, I was denied entry by the guard. I had never been forbidden anything in Issik before, especially not access to the prince. I was enraged and flushed, and the guard bowed his head in apology to my tiny visage.  
"Go to him," I commanded in my best impression of Irlik's demeanor. "and inform him that I insist upon our friendship and the adventures we have faced." The guard failed to look impressed, but having perhaps more sympathy for more red face than fear for his position, left me and entered the apartment.  
There was a crash of metal. Some plate fell. I heard Haril's adolescent voice shriek "that CHILD?" and then something else I could not catch. After a moment the guard returned.  
"You are to be placed with the dancers," he said to me and took my arm to lead me to their apartment. I had overstepped and turned a precipice into a descent.

I had stayed as far as I could from the dancers until that point, just as I had ignored the other children in Grantia. They did not interest me like men did. Plus they stared at me the same way the sailors had stared at the Intoah off the coast of northfields. They did not think I belonged. When the guard brought me to them, they were in the middle of their bathing and perfuming regiments. Their dancemaster watched over them as if watching for forest fires.   
"He is not a dancer." The dancemaster shouted at the guard.  
"I was told to bring him here, that is all." The guard said and left.  
The dancemaster looked at me "what are you FOR?" he asked me.  
"I am to watch you," I lied. "to be sure you know these are the prince's boys and not your own."  
"Oh?" he said with a smirk. "And are you the prince's boy as well?"  
"I AM."  
The dancemaster almost certainly knew I was lying, but I was a strange child with no easy category as to my place in the hierarchy. Better not to reach and be smacked down (as I had just been, though he did not know it).   
"Then stay and watch me, little guard."  
I found myself a stool and seated myself on one side of the large warm water pool. He sat on the other. Between us the dozen boys went through a trained routine of scrubbing themselves and each other, switching between warm and cool water, and applying lotions and perfumes. They chatted as they did so.  
"The floors here are all harsh," a younger boy was saying to no one in particular. It sounded like a bit of idle talk he was repeating because he knew it was a safe and common opinion. "I miss the soft white carpets of the capital."  
"I miss the cretonnes of the sofas," said another. "and curtains on the windows. It is too cold here at night, my teeth chatter."  
"That must be dangerous for the master," a third whispered. It was within my earshot and several boys looked up to me to see what my response was. I decided it best to feign deafness. The dancemaster was doing the same or had honestly not heard them.   
"Our wool blankets are itchy and thin, and I spend half the night walking to keep my legs warm." the first boy said again. He pulled his entire leg out of the water and over his head at that, giving me a show of his skill. It was then that I realized what they were doing. They wanted to see if I had any real influence over the prince, and if I did whether I could be an advocate for their comfort. Was not Haril a better voice to speak for them at the moment? But perhaps they liked him no better than I did. Unless I did something, they would soon learn either I would not or could not help them, and then I would have their scorn.  
The troupe's days began with dancing, then went to bathing, and then ended with lessons from Hahg. Since many of these boys would one day be trusted servants and lower advisors to nobility, they needed to have some sense of the larger world and practical matters. The boys dressed for these lessons in practical linen tunics, much more simple than anything they wore when outside their own apartments. They sat on the same floor they used as their practice hall and Hahg entered. He was surprised to see me shadowing them, now standing near the Dancemaster as we both watched over the class. He looked at me with an inquistive eye, trying to guess my place and position in this arrangement. I stared straight ahead and gave him no clue, for I had little clue myself. My guess was that Haril had simply wanted me away from the prince, so impulsively made a request that the prince granted. The less ripples I made about it now, the more likely it was that it would fade from the mind of everyone.

At the end of the lessons as the boys ate their evening meal on the practice floor, I considered if it would be prudent for me to slip away so that I was not bedded with this rabble. But just as I had made up my mind to do so, Haril appeared. The boys all looked up to guage his mood, and I knew instantly he was a feared leader among them. The dancemaster himself seemed to shrink in deference.   
"This child has been given to me as a plaything," he said and walked toward me. He grabbed me by my arm and led me back toward the baths. "by order of the prince, do not interfere!" he called to the troupe.

He threw me into the cold water with my clothes on and held my head underwater. He was a full six inches taller than me and much stronger. I felt the way I did when I saw Sia under the waves. The water became red and black. Than he lifted me and threw me on the hard stone floor. I gasped for air and as I did he kicked me in the stomach.  
"You are shit," he screamed at me. "You are shit and bile and the cum from a dog!" He kicked me again and threw me back in the water. This time he jumped in after me and bent me over, holding my head down so my face was submerged and I could not breathe. He reached under my tunic and pulled it up. With the dexterity of a dancer he pulled down his own breeches and I felt his cock against my ass. I struggled and squirmed as once again my eyesight faded. He was focused now not on my head but my ass and I turned just enough for one eye and one nostril to breach the surface. With labored pain I breathed in both air and water, involuntarily coughing which led to swallowing even more water. My lungs burned in confusion and desperation as they tried to grab the air that accompanied the deluge. Haril was violently pushing against my body now, making waves in the pool and keeping me off my balance. I felt his cock between my ass cheeks, prodding and prying for a way deeper in. I was very small and very tight and the water made my ass very dry. If he had simply taken me on the floor, he'd have been in me by now. But I do not think he knew if he wanted more to kill me or fuck me, so he was trying to do both at once. But as he focused more on getting deeper in, his grip on me loosened. With a sudden effort, I pushed myself away from him with my legs and propelled myself across the pool. He grabbed my little leg and flipped me over to stop my momentum. my body slapped the surface and my eyes faced up into his. He put his torso back between my open legs with his hands fiercely clenching each of my thights. I sputtered and twisted and my head sank below the waves as he began to thrust himself into me. I felt like he had done something awful and I was in two pieces. I felt sure if I could get a good look at myself I'd see one half of my little body dismembered from the other, that the only thing keeping me from floating apart was his hands on me and somehow the heat that he filled me with. My outstretched arms pushed my shoulders back toward the surface so I could take a small desperate breath before going under again. I was drowning, I was dying, I was shaking. And I felt a thing I had never felt before, a sense of wonder and magic from deep within me that I didn't know existed. Even if I had not been in water, a part of me realized, I would still be thrashing. Fear and ectasy began to hit me in equal measures. But it did not make my situation less severe. Haril's own body was shaking and I used the moment to go completely deadweight. It surprised him and I slipped off of him and kicked him in the groin as I twisted away. He caught me once more and spun me around the pool and my head connected with the edge and all went dark.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what happened after the attack

I awoke -- again! -- in a large red velvet bed. I couldn't remember where I was. What had happened? I was drowning. That's right. I had escaped the merchant and had fallen under the waves and Sia had saved me. No, not Sia. Yunt, the sea captain, who I supposed I hadn't met yet if I was only now waking up. But no, that was months ago. It was the baths. Who had saved me this time?  
I was in Prince Irlik's bed in the very apartment where he and Haril had lain and denied me entrance. And now, here I was. I couldn't help but feel like I had somehow won. But a distant and persistent ache surrounding my head told me it was not that simple. I reached my hand toward my head and found that somehow my own body begged me not to touch it. As I gained a little more consciousness I realized my hair had been shaved off and one line in particular across my scalp felt cool. More than cool. Drafty. I had a horrible image of my head being completely split open and me bleeding all over my prince's beautiful bed.  
I looked to my left and my right, too panicked to lift my head lest it fall to pieces. I did not see but rather heard someone stir in a tall chair next to the bed.  
"Water-seed!" it was the voice of my prince, my Irlik. "Water-seed, you have awakened. Hahg, come quick."  
I heard Hahg enter the room from somewhere nearby. He bent over my head and stared into my frigthened eyes.  
"He will live," he said after a moment. "Though whether he will be feeble is still to be seen."  
I tried to respond that of course I wasn't feeble, but my mouth was too dry and moving my lips seemed too hard. My mind retreated to a hazier state of half-awareness and I was not that lucid again for days.

When I did awake again, I still dared not talk and would not move my head until extra pillows were brought to me and I was encouraged to prop myself against them.  
Irlik sat with me almost always, but it was when he was gone that Hahg told me the story.  
"When Haril left with you, I ran for the prince. I knew no matter what else, Haril lied about the prince giving you to him. For the prince has never thought of you as another subject, but something more nebulous, and if anything he knows -- or thinks he does -- that you have promised to wait for Yunt. The prince may not favor me, but he does listen to me and with speed came to you. He found you in a blood red pool, your head bleeding badly. I used my skill to stitch you as I could. Thank the gods your skull did not crack. Haril also has cause to thank the gods on that account. For your sake, he was exiled. Had you died, Irlik would have thrown him into the sea. And so it seems you may have won your contest, though for my part I don't know how the prince feels about fucking an idiot. We will have to see if the gods have left you any wits at all."

With that I tried to give Hahg a knowing smile to let him know I was still there, but when I did Hahg face drained of color. I think the grin may have come off looking like that of a dimwit.

With a bald head and a giant mark across the top of my scalp, I am sure I did look like an idiot. It could not be helped, and while I wanted to reprove my wit and worth to the prince, I was also so tired. Besides, my helplessness had a curious effect. He looked on me more than he did before, not less, and spent all his time in his room watching over me. He slept on a sofa in the corner of his room and let me have the bed. He watched carefully when the servants took care of my toiletries and wiped me, as if he was afraid I would break. I remembered he had first seen me at my moment closest to death, and now it was as if he re-met me at the same place. As the days went on I regained my strength, first only getting up to use the chamber pot. I still did not speak, for I felt that something in me was not ready to fully rejoin the world. There was still a fog and an ache about me. But there was also a greater clarity and a certain pride in my heart. Twice I had come to the point of death, and twice it had fled before me. Who now would stop me from achieving my ends! 

So one late afternoon when returning to the bed, I looked at the prince who was looking at me from where he lounged on the sofa smoking opium. I was naked as I had been since I first awoke, as everyone already knew I preferred anyways. He was in his own bedclothes, rarely did he bother changing during these days when every thought was focused on me and nothing else. I stood at the foot of the bed and reached out my hand toward him, beckoning him to come to me. With graceful steps he did and I led him silently onto the bed. He lay in the middle, in his rightful spot, propped up on innumerable pillows. I lay in the crest of his arm, my head on his shoulder, one arm under him and the other on his chest. I felt his breathing and I felt my own again for the first time in weeks. Then I drifted back toward sleep. I lazily drifted up and down out of consciousness while he held me. Then I felt his arm tense and he held me not just with tenderness but also desire. He had not moved me but his demeanor was different. I opened my eyes and saw his cock released from his robes with his free hand around it. He knocked his fist around it rapidly, rocking both him and me in the rhythm. I closed my eyes and let myself just enjoy the sensations. His hand was on my ass, grabbing it with all his strength to tell me he'd never let me go. His breathing was that of a dragon, it sounded like a roaring fire. His heart pounded in his chest like an army to war. Then all at once he was done, and I knew that just by being near him . . . without doing anything but needing him . . . I had made him happy.

As I improved, I finally found my role in Issik as the prince's constant companion. As I left the bed more and more often, he felt more free to leave his apartments and examine his neglected estate. I followed him as a pet, wearing my tunic but no leggings because the servants trying to place them on me tired me so. We would spend hours in his apartment alone together, playing tric-trac, and by this he knew I still had my mind. We would sleep together in the same bed completely unshod, and I would mindlessly play with his cock until he became excited and then I would caress him and kiss him while he came. I was still too fragile in his mind, and too tired in mine, for me to ever show him the things Hahg had taught me.

One morning he arose and left before I awoke, and when he returned with some bread and cheese for me (for I had only a little appetite and he preferred to feed me himself), I had hidden myself among the pillows. He became so instantly distraught, screaming for the servants, that I revealed myself. But he had already turned from the bed and was grasping for the door, so I weakly called "my prince!"  
He turned around, smiling and astonished. It was the first words I had said since my injury.  
He ran back to the bed and sitting on his knees, grabbed me and pulled me up him. He took my head in his hands and kissed the short hair growing back in, avoiding only my still sensitive scar.  
"Silly boy," he laughed with the noble and pure intensity of feeling onlya prince can have, "I thought I had lost you."  
"I am yours, my prince," I said with an honest smile.  
"But with if you were kidnapped, sweet one?"  
"No one would dare. For everyone knows you love me, and they like me to please you, for they know I am your happiness." He took my shoulders and pulled me away from him, but not unkindly. He looked at my face as if he had never seen it before.  
"Your new tongue is a bold one, my favorite." He said with glimmering eyes. A moment later he said "it is time we leave this dreary place. It is fine for a season, but I want you to see my world. My ship is in port. When you are well enough, we shall have an adventure."  
This truly did please me and this is the part of me that let show on my face. But I was also concerned. For if the prince's ship was here, that meant Yunt was. What would Yunt say and feel when he saw the prince and I together? And what would I say and feel if I were to learn I still wanted him? 

I didn't see Yunt when I boarded, more than another week later. Even though I was worried about seeing him, I was also restless and asked every day when I could see the capital, the giant city I had just barely glimpsed once upon a time. Finally Gahg examined my head and looked into my eyes and said that I was fit for travel, since winter was ending and the days were once again becoming warm.

The prince himself carried me wrapped in blankets from his bed in the palace to his -- our -- bed on the ship. The men stood at attention as the royal personage boarded. I knew Yunt would be among them, so I played the coward and pretended to be asleep.

The journey was uneventful except that the ocean air was good for me. Every mid-morning the prince would carry me onto the deck of the ship and every mid-afternoon before the chill the prince would carry me back to bed. Walking far still seemed beyond me, especially at sea, and so I could not hunt out Yunt even when I felt brave, and he never came to see me. That was just as well, for the prince was my constant companion and I would not know what to say that would not cause one of them to be cross with me.

As my strength continued to return, I did grow stronger and began to be able to walk around our large quarters -- mostly from the bed to the sofa and back. While at the beginning of the voyage a servant brought me a chamber pot, by the end I relieved myself the same as any sailor. 

The nights with the prince were full of comfort and love, but I wondered if I bored him. Even when I was well I could not have moved like Haril, and now that I was in such a state of perpetual fatigue I wondered if the prince regretted sending him away in my place. The thought even occured to me as I awoke one morning that perhaps the real reason for this voyage was that the prince was going after his exiled lover. But no, that made no sense. Prince Irlik need not, and would not, lie to me. I was his, not the other way around. If he bid me be gone from him, what could I do about it? Though with every fiber I pleaded with the stars that the prince be patient with me until I could be more than just a pillow to him. I would even accept being the slave of the monster Haril, compliant victim to his beatings and torture, if that young lord would allow me to accompany him to the chamber of his lord Irlik. But now I was heaping fantasy upon fantasy, and to my surprise not all of that idea seemed odious to me. But then I turned my face up to the sleeping prince and new that it was not for me to prognosticate, and that my only schemes should be for his happiness. And at that moment is when I decided I had been the pampered child long enough. It was time for me to earn the blessings I had been given. My lord's prick was making a morning mountain under our cotton sheet, and with gentle movement I slipped down to kiss my master's manhood good morning.  
I licked the underside of him as I had been taught, many quick flips near the tip like a dog lapping water. I held his length in one hand, clasping the other around his leg. My little feet wiggled in the air, wrapped up in the large sheet.  
The first sound from my lord's lips that morning was a moan of pleasure. The second was the whispered name "Haril." That was a sword through my ears and into my head, but I was my master's to be whatever he wanted. Holding back because he forgot who he was with would not convince him that I was the right boy for him.  
"You are sick, my little rose," was the third thing he said, and I knew he had remembered who hid beneath the sheet. I thought he might ask me to stop, but then his pelvis moved slightly up, wordlessly commanding me to do more than knock at the door. I took his entire helmet in my mouth. It was large, larger than Hahg's. Not as large as I imagined Sia's would have been, but now it had been almost a year since I had seen Sia and I had grown. Still I was small. I tried more than the helmet, but it felt too much like the day I had drowned and I knew if I stayed there my head would ache all day and the tears would flow. I hoped the prince would not ask it of me though, for I did not know how to respectfully object.

But the prince this morning seemed happy to simply observe what I knew on my own, probably still somewhat in shock that I knew anything at all. Girls in the harem are taught by some secret I did not know, boys in the dance troupe learn from each other and probably from the dancemaster. Did the prince suspect that I learned from Hahg, as the prince once had? I imagined the prince in my place and it seemed so wrong. He was a lord, a master. Even as a boy it would have been his place to be served rather than serve. It showed the mercy of Prince Irlik that Hahg had not been killed or exiled for trying to make a prince into a slave. Unless the prince had liked it back then and had grown out of it? Is that something that would happen to me too? When I was strong and large, would I want a boy of my own rather than to be someone's boy? I had never thought of that. It explained Hooth and Sia though, did it not? Perhaps that was the way of things. The strong protects the weak, and the mercy and love the weak is shown continues from generation to generation. It seemed right in the world, and a feeling of belonging filled my heart just as my prince's seed filled my mouth.

The prince held me for quite a while after that, and my plan was to repeat our moments of paradise the very next morning. However, I was still more frail than I imagined and the work of the morning led to a deep and long nap. I awoke close to mid-day to find myself the one this time surprised. The prince, who had managed to get up and dress without disturbing me, returned with a servant carrying fresh bread and coffee into our cabin.  
"My lord, how can this be?" I asked. What was this magic?  
"We are docked, silly child." He said, "did you not know it was today?"  
I shook my head and grinned. I sat up on the bed, greedy to have these treats not found in the middle of the ocean. I slurped down the bowl of coffee and felt like a thousand strong men. I demanded another from the servant, who provided it only after the prince made me vow that this one I would sip.

I dressed in tunic -- and those drasted leggings -- for we were in the city now, and every impression made by those in the company of nobility affected politics for the entire empire. We left the ship soon after, placed upon a cart carried on the shoulders of six strong bare chested men who wore leather skirts like Sia's and metal necklaces like Haril's. They in fact all looked like the kind of men who might have been dancing boys just a few years before. If so, they had traded in their nubile skinny arms for large sinewy biceps that looked as if they could hold the sun itself in the sky. 

Our first stop was the Immet, the temple of the gods. In the true religion of the empire, the Immet is the only place holy enough to give worship to the deities. Once many centuries ago, all were required to return to the Immet once a year to repledge their obedience. But as the empire grew, the prophets declared that the gods in their mercy understood that such a burden was too much for mortals at the far edges of the empire to bear. And so instead, all who enter the city must rededicate themselves to the deities on the first day of their arrival, no matter how long or short a time they had been away.   
The trip through the streets toward the Immet was grandeur upon grandeur. Each street provided more and more curiously decorated houses of wood and stone. The houses near the docks were small and crude by city standards, but already grander and more sturdy than anything had been in Grantia. And they were so many fabrics everywhere. The houses of the capital decorated both inner and outer walls of their houses in tapestries during the winter months, and many of them had not yet pulled these down for summer. Red and yellow and blue scenes of dragons and lions and gods and battles, made from wool and silk weaved together.

The Immet was the largest building we had come to yet. It was a completely square building and it felt to me like it would have dwarfed the entire village of Grantia if they had been set side by side. An immeret stood at each corner, and the roof of the main building pointed high toward heaven. I believed the gods really did live there.  
In front of the building was a courtyard where visitors made themselves known and pledged their loyalty to the gods. Irlik and I got down from the carriage. He walked with his hands covering his breasts and I imitated.  
"Why have you come, traveller?" An old woman in a black robe asked Irlik. She only glanced at me, but gave me a look like I was a weapon.  
"I am of Caffree, but I dwell in the capital. I have returned from a journey and so wish to pledge my allegiance to the gods."  
"The gods accept your offering," the woman responded and reached her hand out to me. I stared at Irlik bewildered.  
"I'm sorry, kind mother, I am teaching him our ways. He is not my offering."   
The woman looked actually relieved. "Then where is our offering?"  
"I am prince of Caffree," Irlik said. "I offer to the gods all my lands in that province."  
The woman looked at him like he was a child who had made a vulgar joke. "Lord prince, the gods accept your offering" was all she said.  
And with that Irlik took my hand and we walked back to the carriage.  
"We aren't going inside?" I asked as he lifted me up.   
"No," said Irlik climbing on beside me. "No man goes inside. The Immet is run by widows. When a woman is widowed she has two choices. She can return to her husband's family or she can dedicate herself to the gods. If she dedicates herself to the gods, her husbands belongings became the property and assets of the Immet. But in return the widow had a place of honor and safety for the remainder of her days."   
"I bet the Intoah have nothing so civilized for their widows," I said. I had noticed conversations about how good the empire was invariably led to how bad the Intoah were. But Irlik shhhed me. "do not speak of the Intoah," he whispered, looking at cautiously at his own servants who carried us "there is nothing you can say about them, good or ill, that will not make us an enemy of someone."  
"Does everyone give such a large offering?"  
"My lands?" Irlik laughed. "Favorite boy, I have no lands. The emperor took them and gave them to -- well you know who. But the temple law about offerings is traditional only. They have to accept whatever people give them without complaint."  
"Then why did you say that to her?"  
"Because it will be written down and recorded as all offerings are. And I would not have the memory of Caffree pass from the empire. Let its name be put in writing as often as possible, to remember what was lost."  
"Where are we going now?" I asked, becoming once again with the amazing streets of the city. We winded down crowded roads that passed larger and larger houses until we passed right by an open air market, larger even than the Immet had been. Tents of all colors covered wooden booths and innumerable people chatted and browsed. I caught glimpses of jewellry and feathers and the skins of animals I didn't recognize. Between the street and the market, water flowed straight from a stone statue into a pool, and two naked babies splashed in it while their mother watched.  
"To the palace, bright one. We shall meet the emperor." I smiled at this and watched the crowds. I noticed two different reactions as we passed by groups of people. Some turned down their heads as if they did not want to see the prince. I remembered my own feint at sleeping to avoid Yunt. But most people, especially women, waved to him and even gasped in pale emotion and stretched their arms out as if he were sunlight or welcome rain.

How shall I describe the palace? I fear I have already exhausted all the words I know to tell you how wondrous the city was. But the palace itself was even grander. Six towers and a high stone wall surrounded the massive complex. Subjects crowded around the outside, going about their daily and noisy life, but on the other side of the wall all was serene. seven gardens, each one divided by vine-covered fences, represented the seven heavens of the righteous. Each garden wound around the others with various gates between them, so as to affect the sense of a never-ending maze. Or one could take the main walkway that cut through them all and let straight to the main hall, where the Emperor took visitors. It was made of stone and covered in plaster painted coral, with two columns on either side of great metal doors. The doors themselves were engraved with an image of a thousand naked slaves below a bearded man whose face was painted gold. Beyond this building, seemingly in the distance, were the emperor's private quarters, where dwelt his family and servants and where no one not summoned by the emperor was permitted to enter, upon penalty of death.  
We were carried to the metal doors and then got down and entered the lobby of the main hall, where a barefoot slave bowed before us and then ran out out a passage on the opposite side of the lobby to tell his master of our arrival. We were waiting for seemed like an interminable time to me, though my prince was patient, when a man in a white linen cloak and a magnificent black caftan with jewel lined seams approached us from the same passage where the slave had left. It took me a moment to recognize that this finely dressed man was Yunt. He clasped Irlik as a brother and then knelt down to me as if I was a shy bird.  
"Little lamb," he said "you are as beautiful as ever."  
"More a lion than a lamb," Irlik responded with a laugh, "he has escaped death twice now and is braver for it."  
"More than many of my soldiers, I am sure" Yunt smiled, looking into my face. I showed my bewilderment in my eyes. "Did you not expect to see me here?"  
"I did not want to tell him," said Irlik. "In case you were out of the city and he became wracked with disappointment." I wondered if that was the reason, or if Irlik was as ambivalent as I upon seeing our friend.  
"While I am here, my lord," Yunt stood up. "Serving the Emperor once again as his Minister of War."  
"War?" I managed. "I thought you were a sea captain."  
"You've really told him nothing, sire?"  
"With children it is hard to know which tales to tell."  
"Ah, but this little one is more than a child. We have plucked him from the waves and he has been privy to our councils before." This was said lightheartedly, but I thought there was a little tinge of frustration in Yunt's voice.  
"We shall have to make that right," Irlik said diplomatically.  
"In good time, my lord. For now, the emperor will see you. May I reaquint myself with your charge? The emperor is in council with his advisors and while we know this little warrior's brilliance, it would be disrespectful to introduce a child to the emperor at this moment."  
"Very well," Irlik said. He took my hand and placed it in Yunt's. I was a little frightened but I did not know why. "I will not be gone long," he said to me. A slave in the doorway led him down the passage.  
"Now, my child," Yunt said, looking down at me with gentle glee. "Tell me of your year."

We walked through the gardens and I told Yunt about exploring the stone palace and my more traditional studies with Hahg. I told him about watching the dancing boys and the one day I spent with them that led to my attack. I did not tell Yunt of my plan to seduce the prince, nor the times in bed we had shared since my injury.  
"But why did this dancing boy attack you?" Yunt asked.   
"I do not know, and the prince sent him away before I could thrash him."  
Yunt chuckled at this, as I hoped he would.  
We found a place on the ground in the gardens to sit, and Yunt had me cozy between his legs. I did not resist. I held no ill will toward him, only fear of hurting him. The slave who followed us carried a pipe and a small instrument of some kind wrapped in a velvet cloth. Yunt flipped off his shoes and with a sigh became instantly relaxed. A tall umbrella pine shadowed us, and all round us were still larger trees, which somewhat softened the rays of the sun.  
"Now as for me, dear love, I was never merely a captain of one ship. Or at least, not in a long time. I was raised aboard my father's vessel, and he grew old faster than most under the withering sun and I relayed his messages to the crew until more and more I simply gave them myself. Thus I was an accomplished captain of an entire fleet by the time I reached the prince's age. After a great battle against the Intoah, the emperor, who had known my father, made me minister of the empire's navy. That is not a great an honor as it sounds, for by that point the Intoah owned the waves and our ships ran from them more often than we fought. Still we protected the coastlines as long as we could. But the Intoah broke through, and the minister of the army and his master the minister of War were killed. As part of the surrender, the empire was not allowed to have an army or navy for ten years. The emperor was watched closely to see that he had no relation with military forces beyond his personal and city guards. And so I entered the service of Irlik instead, for we were both great men without a home. I ferried him away from the lands of Caffree and was with him from then until when I left his service for your sake. I hope you do not hate me for leaving you, sapling."  
"I do not, my sea father." I leaned into his chest, honestly glad to feel him around me. I had only assumed he had been onboard his old ship and had not wanted to see me. I felt warmth at knowing this had not been the case.  
"When I returned to the capital after leaving you, the emperor called me to him and told me that I was to be his new minister of war. That the Intoah had picked me as acceptable." He turned his head and spit. "I will not lie to you, spirit of my spirit, the position is both an honor and an insult. For I serve the emperor gladly, but I do so at the whim of our enemy. I have no army and my navy is made only of private ships that I secretly know would be loyal to me."  
"And yet you seem different," I said lazily. "You are not as hard as once you were."  
"That is life in the palace," Yunt said with a laugh that I more felt in this body than heard on his lips. "I fear it makes everyone soft. To willing to sacrifice honor for the sake of luxury."

Evening came slowly, covering the ground with it long shadows, and the grey wings of the little bats fluttered in the mystery and silence of the growing night.  
"Shall we go and find our prince?" Yunt said as the shadows lengthened. "or shall we sit here into the night and hope he finds us?"  
"We shall sit here," I said, for I was relaxed and sleepy. "And hope he brings to us food."  
"Well, I can manage that." Yunt snapped and the slave approached. She had been so quiet I forgot the young woman was there. "bring us some dolmas."  
The slave disappeared and returned not too long after with a basket. She knelt on the ground next to us and without disturbing me, Yunt reached in and grabbed one.  
"Open your mouth, baby bird," he whispered to me. He slid the dolma into my mouth slowly and watched my reaction carefully. I was still and quiet with my eyes on his, and then with no warning to him, chopped down greedily on my snack. Oil trickled down my lips. Yunt chuckled and with his hand on my cheek moved my face toward his and licked my my chin clean. I was surprised by even his forwardness here, as was the slave who blushed and turned her head. I took the rest of the dolma in my hand and ate it as I would.  
"My soul rejoices in you," Yunt said as I continued to sit between his legs. He rubbed my head gently, examening the spot from which blood had flown. "I have given you a year. When I left you, I felt I loved you so much that I could wait for your decision forever. But now I feel I love you such that I cannot wait at all."  
I felt the warmth of his body but especially that underneath his waist.   
"Do I seem ancient to you, little one?" He asked me.  
"No more than when last we met," I said non-commitally.   
"I wait for you with impatience, and in that impatience I have forgotten what my protestations were. Do you understand that?"  
Certainly I understood, and a shiver made my lips whithen, and my eyelids close.  
"Is it possible that a young lamb can understand the risk of love? Do I dare lead you into a forest of delights that might equally be your master or your slave?"  
I had no answer for him. Once, I could have responded to the simple animal sensations. His warm body, his smell of sea and home, his heart that I knew would never abandon me if I were simply to ask it not to. But I was older now than I had been, and I knew he was not the only path I might choose. I could climb out from where we reclined together and walk away and know that I could make it on my own. Knowing such a thing about myself, to stay willingly would be more honest than when I was a desperate orphan who would cling to any hand. But I was not sure his hand was any longer the one I wanted. I was not sure it wasn't.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dances of love and passion

He moved his hand beneath me and I knew he was undoing his robes. I looked into the eyes of his slave, who smiled at me nervously. With one hand beneath me Yunt found my bare ass beneath my tunic. With the other, he put his giant arm across my collarbone so any decision I might have had was rhetorical.  
"Oh my soul," he whispered with a lust that frightened me. "How I would have grieved if I had lost you. He reclined himself more, putting his back on a nearby tree and putting my back on his stomach. I felt his naked hard pulsing cock touch my naked ass. He moved himself back across my cheeks, not going in but at every moment threatening to.  
"My lord," I whispered, frightened. I did not know my words before I said them. "I am but a sapling. I have not grown."  
"Have you ever shot your seed, child?" Yunt asked, as if it were a justification for what he was attempting to do.  
"No, my lord." He stopped moving at this, genuinely surprised. "With all those dancing boys you told me about, none ever made you come?"  
"Come where?" I asked. He chuckled. Then he repositioned himself a little and pulled off my tunic. I sat there against him in the grass with only my white leggings on, reaching up by not pasy my tiny balls. I felt exposed for the first time in my life, perhaps because his slave watched us so intently. He motioned to her somehow, and she approached me. Then she lay down in grass between my legs, twisted her head up like a snake, and swallowed my cock and balls all at once.

The feeling I felt was one I had not felt before. It was just as new as Haril in my ass in the pool, but completely different. She swallowed my cock and balls, but I felt as if she had swallowed my entire body. I felt enclosed by her and by Yunt, with him still holding me tight. I was double caught, completely motionless and yet with the sensation of flying. Her giant tongue lifted and separated my balls and then let them drop as she rubbed against my cock. Then she sucked with such a force I would afraid my little boyhood would fly off and be down her throat. Then she began tricks I knew, flicking at my little tip and then moving my tiny shaft up and down against her lips. I do not know how long this took, but it was not long. Hahg and Irlik were both in me long enough to sing at least one song when I pleased them, but I lasted no longer than a single verse. I twisted and shook and then felt a sensation like a damn bursting as I poured into the slave's mouth. All this time Yunt held me and I began to understand that he was explaining to me that he had moved so fast because he loved me, but he did not mean to say that my happiness was unimportant. The slave left and returned a moment later with a sheep-skin. Yunt got up and wrapped me in it and soon I was dozing comfortably staring up into the brilliant stars. When I was almost asleep, Yunt and the slave moved a little farther from me and the last thing I heard was his grunting and her moans.

When the sun was up, I awoke and found before me, laid out on a fig lead, a cake and three black olives, which I ate. I thought about the events of last night. It was new to me, and I knew Yunt wanted me to feel good. But for such a thing to happen with a slave, and more than that a stranger, made me feel sad and alone. Yunt was right there pressed against me, and I yet I somehow felt abandoned. I didn't dwell on it. I pulled on my tunic (my leggings had never come off) and then made my way back to the doors of the main hall. The metal doors were shut and there were guards in front of it.  
"Where is Captain Yunt?" I asked boldly.  
"Minister Yunt is in council, little shitrag." The guard responded to me. The name stung, but I ignored it.  
"Where is his slave? The one who was with us?"  
"That was his wife, you filthy child." the other guard said. "Don't think you've taken her place."  
His wife? It never occured to me that Yunt had a wife. But for a great man like him, there would be little difference between a slave and a wife, except in the honor she recieved. I felt honored that he would be so affectionate with me in front of her, and that she would serve us so silently.  
"What shall I do?" This would be my final question to these donkeys no matter how they answered me.  
"Suck my cock," the first guard responded and both laughed. I rolled my eyes at the idea that such an idea would shock me and turned to find other pre-occupations with which to amuse myself.

Yunt was in the gardens after all, admiring a bush of roses with his wife at his side. They both wore fresh robes and had seemingly been to a bath.   
"Hello, little warrior." Yunt said. "How are you this bright morning."  
I smiled, shy at seeing them.  
"My dear, you've made a man into a mouse!" He laughed heartily. "You'll have to try the spell again." My head tilted down but I met her eyes for a second. They were soft and worried.  
"I am well," I finally managed. I did not want her to be concerned for me. "My sleep was dreamless and the morning is warm."  
"That's good," Yunt returned. "Irlik most likely had less sleep than you. He spent the night with his own wife, the princess Yaka."  
Another shock "Is everyone married but me?" I exclaimed. Both adults laughed.  
"Why of course, child" Yunt said. Apparently his wife did not speak. "Men who can afford to marry as soon as they are able. Why wouldn't they? A good wife is essential to happiness."  
"But then you go so long without seeing them?" I asked. In Grantia, married couples saw each other every day. And slept with no one else, at least as far as I had known.  
"Only when we are required to."  
"But why did you not tell me?"  
"You never asked. It never occured to me that you might think me unable to get a wife. Surely you did not think so little of me, or of the prince?"  
"I just did not know."  
"Well let us go find him, and you can see for yourself. But first you need a bath." 

I was taken around to a different building on the palace grounds, where twelve maids me our little company and took me from the couple. They undressed me and led me inside to the baths, where they poured hot and cold water on my alternately and scrubbed me with burlap. I was still getting used to having so many women around. Grantia had of course had them, but the ships and the island of Issik had been almost completely male.   
"Is the princess the only wife of prince Irlik?" I asked the maids as they scrubbed me. It occured to me that there may be other hidden women.  
"She was given to the prince in consolation" one said.  
"Consolation?" I asked.  
"Of his lost lands," said another.  
"and his lost family," replied a third.  
"Silence." said a fourth.

After the bath I was clothed in a robe gold-embroidered silk trimmed with lace, black leather shoes with gold heels, strings of emeralds, rings on every finger, and a necklace of metal coins around my neck, like the one Haril had worn.  
Clothed in this manner I met Yunt and his wife again and we were led toward the princesses' apartments.  
"The princess has never lived anywhere but here," Yunt said. "It is not known if she has ever left the palace grounds at all."  
"The maids said Irlik had a lost family," I dared.  
"Yes, child. She drowned herself and her sons rather than leave Caffree at the end of the war. Never speak to him of it."

The Princess received us with a chill dignity of manner. She sat on a throne in the middle of a room of white bearskins and open passages but no windows. We stood and introduced ourselves. She gave me her hand to kiss. Then she told me to show her my teeth. I obliged, giving her a giant toothy grin. She did not respond and I never learned what she was looking for. Next she said, "twirl around slowly." Again I obeyed. She watched as if hoping to find some trick hidden on me.  
Prince Irlik wandered into the greeting room while we were presenting ourselves and chided our adherence to decorum. He was smoking an enormous cigar which he had to hold in his hand while he spoke. It was so large, that the cigar in his hand reminded me of myself holding the prince's cock.  
"We are all family here!" he cried and embraced each one of the three of us in turn as if he had not seen us for ages. He did not embrace his wife, who remained seated. "You've not yet seen the bazaars, have you?" he said to me. I shook my head. "Well then, we must!"

Accompanied by a small contingent of guards, on foot we walked the length of the emperor's walkway that cut through the gardens and back through the main gate to the real world of the captial. By we, I mean Irlik and myself and Yunt. The two wives stayed behind in the palace. Irlik clasped my hand. I made a point of reaching out and clasping Yunt's, so the three of us walked together. I wondered if Yunt, by the prince's comfortable manner with me, guessed that the prince thought of me as his own. But the prince was so comfortable and intimate with everyone, it was hard to say.   
We soon came to a large square decked out similar to the one I had seen the previous day, with wooden booths and giant multi-colored tents and a constant push of people of all ages and sizes mulling and yelling and haggling. Meats of all kinds hung on hooks, and jewellry and pearls and little shiny bobbles that caught my eyes, and funny tiny brushes that were meant only for teeth. Yards and yards of red silk and purple lace and blue-tinted cotton.  
The guards were unnessacery, for the people seemed to love Irlik. Anything he so much as glanced at, let alone touched, was offered to him. Gifts to royalty are never uncommon, but here the people were practically falling over each other to be the one to present a treasure to him. I was likewise engulfed in a sea of compliments about what a fine young man I was, handsome and so well-spoken -- though I had not said a word. There was obvious curiousity about who I was and where I had come from. I was too well dressed and dignified to be a slave, so it must be obvious that I was a companion of some sort. But an open eromenos, the most likely guess, was something the Intoah so looked down upon that no one dared express that conclusion.   
The women, however, looked at me with a mixture of envy and admiration. Whether it was for simply holding his hand or their (correct) imaginations about my place in his bed, it was clear I was where they wished to be. As we walked, flowers were spontaneously thrown at our feet both from venders and from nearby second story windows.  
One dealer pressed into my hand a very small silver-plated pistol, a curved thing only a little longer than my hand with no right angles that was a smooth to the touch. Yunt immediately took from me even as he was gracious to the old man who gave it. I bleated like a lamb for it and wrenched my hand from his to signal my displeasure. He let me go so easily, though, that I quickly put my hand back and did not try that again. After Yunt had examined the weapon to be sure it was free of both gunpowder or any trickery, he gave it to me with an admonishment to place it in my belt and leave it there.  
After our trip through the bazaars, most of the guard was dispatched back to the palace with armfuls of presents we had acquired. I kept my little gun and some flowers I had picked up. We reached a small dock on the Canal, where a long boat with ten rowers waited for us.  
"The city is too large for us to walk about," said the prince. "We shall show it to you by boat."  
The three of us got in and reclined on wooden chaises covered in furs. Both men lay down across from each other and both instinctively reached their hand out to pull me down to them. Both friends saw the other do this and a shadow fell upon our company even as we disembarked. Their eyes locked and the first half of the conversation seemed to pass silently. I simply sat on the floor of the boat between them, like an ante in a game.  
"You are my prince. Nothing I have is not already yours," Yunt said, when the conversation turned to words.  
"You left him."  
"I did. Because I longed to embrace him as the sea longs to embrace a ship. My sea vessel can stand such a storm, but a canal boat as this one would be drowned."  
"He is not drowned."  
"No, my prince." But the words were dark, as if Yunt did not really trust that the prince had not damaged me somehow.  
"Neither of us paid a price for him. Shall we ask him who he would pick?" Irlik replied, equally dark.  
"And have him make an enemy of one of us? No, my prince. There is no hate in my heart for either you nor him. In love, I beg leave to simply retreat and remain your friend."  
With that, the prince grabbed me as his winnings and pulled me to lie down on his chest. I did so, my back to my lord and facing Yunt. Yunt smiled at me kindly. I smiled back. I saw a tremor in his eye.

If the prince held any grudge or suspicion about Yunt, he never showed it. Of course, Irlik never knew the liberties Yunt had taken with me the night in the gardens, when the prince had all but abandoned me for . . . for what? A night with his wife is what I assumed, but I was learning that when the prince saw something he wanted, he always went after it. Servant girls were not safe from his wandering hands, but neither were his personal guard. Most nights I slept in his chamber with him (his wife slept elsewhere), and during these nights I never heard him speak of anyone but me. But I knew that though I kept him happy and he kept me warm, I would awake some mornings without him and know that he had even so gone to find other quarry. But he was the prince, and I would not show ingratitude by nagging after him like some wife. 

After all, at least some of these days when he finally emerged it was from the princesses' apartments. How foolish would it be if I, a mere boy, were to complain of the prince sleeping with his own wife. Rather, I was continually grateful for how polite, if cold, she was toward me. She was a dazzling figure, always clothed in dark, delicate sheer materials that sillouetted her form against any window. Unless most women, she had short hair that was bleached against her dark skin. Her round owl like eyes and accompanying long eye-lashes pierced like a weapon at anyone she targeted, and I would have believed it if anyone told me she was not born to royalty but had appeared one day from the skies and demanded it.

While the princess was distant with me, no one else in the palace of the emperor (who I still had not met) was on guard toward me. Soon everyone, including the vulgar guards who had insulted me the first day, became accostomed to seeing me run through the gardens or playing marbles with the other children. There were other children, some boys and some girls, but who we belonged to or why we were there was never discussed. It was quite an anarchist society in that way. One boy a little older than me, named Hashleg, once screamed that he was the emperor's favorite in order to be freed from jail in a game. The game, which consisted of running and tagging and moving each other from jails to forts and so forth, came to an immediate stop. The boy about 15, a lanky and kind youth name Hisill, went straight to Hashleg and said "you know the rules. In the garden, we are all the same." Hashleg went red but then nodded, and such a thing was never said again.

I followed Hisill that night to see where he ended up. He made his way toward the stables. I thought that perhaps he was even a horse-boy, until I remembered that those children have no time for games and besides, their smell would give them away. He entered the stables and I, having no way to open those doors silently, thought I would have to give up my surveillance. But having nothing else to do, I quietly approached the building and found a ladder against the outer wall that led to an upper hayloft. I climbed the ladder and crawled into the attic of the stables. It was pitch-black, but then a lantern was lit below. Hisill sat on a hill of hay with another boy the same age, this one definitely a stable-slave. They whispered and laughed, and while I could not make out their words the joy they found in each other was loud. Hisill said something and the other boy smiled and blushed. Hisill put his hand on the other boy's face, and the other boy moved his face and kissed it, then seemed to bite it. Hisill pulled his hand, and the boy, up to his own face and the two exchanged a long kiss. Barely leaving each other's mouth, the two fumbled across each other's chest and began pulling off their shirts. The shirts went over their heads and then their hands went down each others tights. The two fell down in the hay, fondling each other and kissing madly. Their tights slowly but persistently worked their way down their legs until eventually the two boys were naked. I vainly tried to figure out which one of these boys was the eromenos, but both of them seemed equally in charge. Still, I guessed that Hisill was the master, since the other boy was a servant. But eventually Hisill lay himself on the hay and looked lovingly up at the slave, and the slave approached Hisill. Hisill's floating ass begged for the slave's cock, and the slave slowly -- so slowly -- found a spot for it to enter. He then began to thrust, not timidly but also somehow not violently. Hisill had asked for this, and both of them seemed to be partners. My head was confused but not unhappy. My little cock pressed against my own robes and I began to rub it as I watched. Since my night with Yunt's wife, I played with myself and came quite frequently. Irlik made me excited, but he never touched me, so often when he was gone or asleep afterward I would relieve myself. 

Now the boys had flipped, so the slave was on his back lifting Hisill high with every thrust. Hisill's own massive cock bounced in the air and sprang back and forth like a dog's rapidly wagging tail. I imagined myself going down and grabbing it. Or even sitting on it. But I kept my place in the upper shadows and rubbed myself. With a bounce and a shudder, the slave boy emptied himself into the ass of his better. Hisill slid off, his cock still large and pulsating. Without a word, the slave got on all fours and circled around like a dog. Hisill mounted the boy and with a grunt pushed into him. I came right as he did, my cum leaping beyond my viewing platform and landing right behind them unnoticed. I laid down and watched the two boys dance of love, but was asleep before they were finally done.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love and Death

The slave boy I had seen with Hisill found me in the morning, and begged me to leave quietly before any of the other servants realized I was there. I did, hoping that somehow my prince had not noticed my absence from his bed. I ran as fast as I could, but upon reaching the prince's apartments found it strangely vacant. A lone servant was sitting with our breakfast. The bed had not been slept in.  
"I was told to watch over you," the servant explained.  
"Where is Irlik?" I replied.  
"It is the princess. The daughter of the emperor. Irlik's wife. She has been -- she is dead."

Two days were given to the lamentation of her slaves and to the entire empire. She remained in her bed and the entire palace household came and beheld her one by one, and then all the nearby nobles. It was well known that she intended to free her slaves on her deathbed, and while they were legally the prince's now, he fulfilled her wish and granted them the choice of leaving the palace's service completely or staying on as servants. Most remained as servants and little changed, for all were subject to the emperor's commands regardless, but the advancement made the old slaves of the princess instantly superior to the other palace slaves in rank and was seen by the public in general as a magnanimous offer.

The traditional sign of freedom from slavery in the empire was the master giving the slave a single freshly washed gem. The gem was to ensure the slave would not be impovershed, for it was considered cruel to free a slave without providing for them. Irlik took this ritual seriously, but as there were hundreds of slaves to free, he did not wash these gems one by one. A bagful at a time would be set into a kind of vinegar, where they soaked and sparkled. With a child's pleasure I plunged my hands into the basins, letting the glittering jewels run through my fingers.

When they were washed, I was to put them into bags carefully arranged on the table. Slippery as they were, I was forever spilling them out into the carpet. This amused the prince, who smiled watching me race around to pick them up before they had to be washed all over again.

"Don't you think they deserve their freedom?" He asked. "Why would you deny them?" He was joking.  
"Where do slaves come from?" I asked, getting back to work. "I mean, sire, they cannot be bought any longer."  
"No, they cannot." The prince replied. "Nor can they offer themselves as slaves if they are destitute. The emperor could afford to change all his slaves to paid servants, but even the richest of the rest of the empire cannot. The poor are now left without a way to be taken care of, except to beg in the streets. A slave's child is the responsibiltiy of the master, under the eye of the gods. A poor man's child has no one who can take care of him."

Later, when I was washing my lord's feet, I said "my lord, I am sorry for the death of your wife."  
I looked from my task up to him. I saw wet eyes. "I would not have my little joy speak of such tragedies" is all he said, and we did not speak of it again.

There was a while when I did not see Yunt, but one day the prince woke me in the morning and declared that I was to stay with Yunt and meet his family properly. The prince, meanwhile, was to spend the next week visiting noble maidens, for a marriage was expected of him soon and the emperor had no other daughters.

Servants packed the clothes I had and the items I had collected, including some jewellry and my small pistol. I then made my way from the prince's apartments, through a section of the gardens, to a small but pretty wooden house that served as the relatively modest home for the minister of War. I was welcomed on the path by, of all people, Hisill.

"Welcome, friend of the prince. I am Hisill, son of Minister Yunt."  
"I know you, Hisill!" I said with a shout. "but I did not know you were my friend's son!"  
"Nor my son's friend!" replied Yunt as he emerged from the house's front door. "And now we are reunited again. As simple friends, eh little sapling?"   
"Of course, sir minister." I replied. Hisill and Yunt both laughed.  
"You have always been one for inconsistent manners," Yunt replied smiling. "One moment a little gentleman, the next a naughty rogue."

I wanted to protest that I could not remember ever being a rogue, but he seemed to find such affection in the idea I decided not to dissuade him of it. We went inside where I looked upon his wife and bowed to her.

"It is an honor to see you again," I said. I did not feel guilty often, but I felt that I had somehow wronged her in our last encounter. Thought true enough it was Yunt's recklessness that had led her to committing acts I knew were beyond her desire, and not any misdeeds of mine.

We reclined in Yunt's parlor and his wife served the three of us, and then herself, bread and stew. It was much more humble food than I was used to eating, but I did not complain. I enjoyed it, for it reminded me of Sia and Grantia. It made me laugh at myself that I had forgotten that most people in the world are not royals or nobles. Even a man who has the emperor's ear goes home and lives more like a villager than a prince.

I sat on the floor next to Yunt, and Yunt's wife sat next to his son. She was much too young to be Hisill's mother, and in fact the way they spoke casually and lightly with each other they seemed more like siblings. Yunt took no notice of this other than to watch them with a satisfied smile on his face.

"Our prince is off to find a new wife, little friend," Yunt said to me. "And why is that?"  
"His princess died."  
"Yes," said Yunt. "Yes she did. Do you not think it strange that she died only two months after being reunited with her husband?"  
I shrugged. "People die."  
"What are you saying, father?" Hisill asked.  
"I thought you had guessed, Hisill." Yunt said. "Have you not been trained in the arts of war and politics? Shall I replace your tutors?"  
"What you suggest is almost treason to speak."  
"I have spoken nothing. Besides, I am in my own house, where I am law. A man may speak more freely at home. Don't worry, I'm sure he will be smart about it."  
I slurped my stew.

We turned in for the night, Yunt and his wife climbing a set of stairs and Hisill and I making our beds on the same pillows where we ate in the parlor. I considered simply walking back to the prince's empty apartment, where a huge unused bed would have given superior comfort. But to do so would have been rude and I did like being near Yunt again. As well as Hisill, who seemed kind.  
"What was your father speaking of?" I boldly asked once we layed down.  
"Prince Irlik, on the night he returned, foolishly layed with his wife."   
"Why is that foolish?"   
Hisill got up on one elbow and looked at me. "Do you know the line of succession?"  
I shook my head.  
"The emperor is succeeded by his son. If he does not have a son, he is succeeded by his closest male descendent by blood. If he does not have a male descendent, he is succeeded by his closest male relative by marriage."  
"That's Prince Irlik."  
"Correct. Unless the princess were to have a son. Then it would skip him."  
"But why should that matter? A little baby couldn't rule."  
"You really are a child, aren't you? You don't know about the Intoah tutors, do you?"  
I shook my head.  
"The Intoah are installing their own tutors in all the high families. The emperor has delivered an Irade saying that tutors must be authorized now before they can teach nobles. And the Intoah are in charge of that authorization. The young nobles are all being taught to be loyal not to the emperor, but to the Intoah."  
I tried to wrap my head around this. Was Hisill saying that the princess had been murdered? By Irlik?

"Irlik is biding his time," Hisill explained to me. "He has the support of the people, which is rare for a noble. He has the tolerance of the nobles, because he is one of them. He is the legitimate heir and he is known as having grievances against the Intoah. The emperor will do anything the Intoah tell him in order to keep his comfort. Irlik, it is thought, will not be such a pushover."  
I admired Hisill's audacity in daring to speak of the emperor in such a way, even in private in the middle of the night.  
"The princess was with child?" I was still putting the pieces together.  
"Who can say?" said Hisill. "But it would explain much. She tells her husband. Her husband doesn't want to risk anyone else learning. He secures his place as next in line. Now the question is, will he go back to waiting for the emperor to die, or has he decided to act further?"  
"Irlik would make a good emperor," I said, more out of loyalty than any real understanding of what the role required.  
"He will with my father by his side," Hisill responded. "They'll show the Intoah whose land this is."

We were silent in our satisfied contemplation of a future where our heroes were in charge and the Intoah were no longer a threat. As we lay there, we began to hear the creaking of the upstairs and soft moaning. It began to grow louder and we could distinctly make out Yunt and his wife making love. Hisill glanced at me. I thought about pretending to be asleep, but I was not quick enough before he saw my eyes. Deciding he didn't care, he pulled off his tights and began to rub his cock to the rhythm he heard above him. It was giant for his age and I remembered it flapping in the air in the stables and how much I wanted to grab it.

So I did.

I startled him by doing so, but he didn't make a noise. On all fours, I bent my head down over him and immersed his cock into my mouth. It wasn't as thick as the princes, but it was long and soft. I relaxed myself and positioned myself over him so that he had a straight line down my tiny throat. Then I matched the sounds of his father above him and started pounding him into me at the same speed. I wanted him to know how strong I thought he was, how much he deserved to be worshipped. I was expecting him to react with some wild and unpredictable movement, but he responded by thrusting at such a perfectly complementary rhythm that he was able to find his way even deeper into me without making me gag. We kept going even after his father had finished, and finally he delivered his seed way back in my throat. He slid out and gasped.

I would've returned to my bed, happy to have been of service to him, but he took me in his arms and kissed me. Then he had me lay down on my back and he began to kiss my little cock. It was an entirely different feeling than when Yunt's wife had proceeded, because no one had commanded him to do it. It was entirely of his own desire, and I felt his happiness in being with me. Why he was happy to do this to me, I did not know. I was not big like the slave he had been with in the stables. But deep thought was hard to come by, for his tongue played my cock like an instrument and I was in heaven.   
Instinctually, my pelvis rotated upward. He took his longest finger and gently began to massage my ass. His mouth continued to bathe my cock and his finger slowly worked and prodded itself around and then into my asshole. My asshole grabbed it like a prize hard won. I had just used the outhouse before retiring to bed, and the stew had made me runny, so the inside of my ass was wet and slippery. His finger slid deep into me with only a little pain. It felt similar but different to Haril's cock, and much more welcome. Then Hisill's finger hit a magic secret spot I had never known of before, and I felt as if I had come alive for the very first time. My entire body twisted in raptuous excitement. Hisill began to vigorously finger-fuck my ass. His tongue wrapped around my little cock and held it tightly. Then I shuttered and froze in an arc and came like I had never come before, with someone who really cared that I felt good.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several Turns of the Wheel

The next morning, a messenger came and called Yunt to the emperor very early.  
"What's the matter?" He asked.  
"There are malcontents on the streets again, and Prince Irlik is not here to calm their spirits." The messenger said. "The Emperor demands you lead the guard against them."  
"Against the city folk?" Said Hisill. "Father, you can't!"  
"Calm down," Yunt said on his way out the door. "I will talk to them and if we cannot resolve what they want, there is always money to bribe them with. It will not come to violence."

So Yunt left in a running-walk. Not wanting to miss anything exciting, Hisill and I both pulled on new clothes as fast as we could and ran after him. We could not get into the council chambers, but Hisill knew of a window we could sit under and listen to ancillory conversations.  
"He's an old fool," said an excited voice. Hisill whispered that it sounded like the minister of the treasury. "He knows nothing of negotiations."  
"He is from a different time," said another more calmer voice. Hisill thought it might be the minister of trade. "When he was young, all the empire needed to show was strength. Now our muscles wain and we must be smarter. And in such regard, mind your tongue."  
"Mind my tongue? Lest what, lest it be cut out?"  
"For one thing."  
"All of us, all we ever do is watch our own persons. None of us are loyal to the empire anymore. We are loyal to our own survival. The Empire is dead. It died when our children were in infancy. Now we are a territory of the Intoah in all but name."  
"All the more reason to watch your tongue."

Minutes later, Yunt and a large contingent of guards exited the main hall and walked the main pathway to the gates that led to the city. We dared not be seen, but as quickly as we could without taking the main path we made our way toward those gates. When we got there, we heard Yunt's voice giving some sort of speech. There was scattered booing but a few sounds of agreement as well. A moment later, the gates opened and he returned. Whatever the crisis had been, it was averted for the moment.

"It will come again," Yunt said to his son that evening over dinner. "The fall of Northfields means the Intoah have finally become our only source of wheat. They raise the prices on a whim, and the people think they mean to starve us."  
"Do they?" I asked.  
"No," said Hisill. "They want us to get used to relying them. They want to use us to build up their purse, so if we ever do war with them again, they will use the gold we gave them to pay for the fight."  
"Then the longer we wait before we fight, the more money they have?" I asked.  
"There will be no fight." Yunt interjected in a loud voice, making it sound like a command. "We have nothing to fight them with."  
"Not yet?" offered Hisill.  
"Not ever." returned Yunt. "Not as long as the emperor is more willing to raise arms against his own people than against his oppressors."  
"But he is allowing you to raise a secret army?" Hisill suggested.  
Yunt was startled by this. "How do you know such a thing?"  
"Father," Hisill said casually. "You would not go to him day after day if there was nothing for you to do."  
"I've raised a bright one," Yunt touched his son gently on the cheek. "Yet do not arouse your hopes."

The crisis of that day was an unusual interuption to the customary quiet and serene life inside the palace walls, and as if in apology the next several days were even more quiet than usual, at least to those not privy to the machinations of power. After that first night, Yunt refused to share any more confidences with his family, but he faced every evening meal with a grimness that spoke of hidden stresses.  
Hisill and I continued our blossoming friendship. In time, he was even able to get his slave friend Jeddy to steal away for a moment.

"This is my companion Jeddy," said Hisill. "When I am grown, I shall free him and we shall be married."  
"You cannot marry a boy," I said.  
"The Intoah allow it," Jeddy said, quickly adding "sir."   
"We are not Intoah," I said, more angry than I meant to be. "Besides, I don't believe you. My tutor Hahg taught me that the Intoah do not approve of eromenoi."  
"He didn't say eromenos," Hisill said. "We shall be equal."  
"Husbands and wives are not equal."  
"They are among the Intoah," said Jeddy.  
"The Intoah are our enemy," was my only response.  
"Come friends, let's not fight." Hisill grabbed my shoulder but I violently shrugged him away.  
"I am not friends with anyone who welcomes Intoah rule!" I shouted. It was selfish of me to be so loud, for if attention was drawn to the fact that Jeddy was away from work, he would be beaten.  
"No one is saying that," Hisill said in a stern whisper. "Just that there is more than one way to see life. I want the empire to prosper, but maybe not everything about the Intoah is evil. Maybe the empire can grow stronger by seeing new ways to do things."  
"How can I hear these words?" I said. "when your own father trusts you to keep his confidences."  
"What my father trusts me with is his own business," Now Hisill was stung, and for the first time I saw him angered. "As what I have trusted you with is ours. Are you going to betray that which I shared with you in friendship?"  
I glared at him for a second. "No, Hisill. For you are still my friend."  
"Thank you," Hisill said and cooled. "Some have masters and some have slaves, but what are they compared to friends?"

When Irlik returned, it was with the daughter of a prince nearby. He came to me straight away.  
"The palace is not mine. I have no lands. I will live in the estate of her father."  
"But you are heir to the empire," I replied. He was pleased at this.  
"So, your education is not entirely neglected. It is true that I am, and is secure for the emperor has no other children nor wives of child-bearing age. But until he passes, I have no more claim to reside here. But I've come to give you a choice."  
"Lord?"  
"I took you to my bed and you came willingly, but I fear I took advantage of your inexperience. You did not realize you would not be my only bedmate, and now that I have a new one whose issue I shall not fear--" he bit his lip after this, he had said more than he meant in that regard. 

I knew in that moment he had killed his wife and his child. I did not care. 

He continued "-- I shall set you up your own room, and I shall not call upon you as often as I have. My wife shall share my bed in your place. Or I offer you your freedom, to go where you will."  
Tears welled up in my eyes "and shall you give me a jewel as well to signify my freedom?" I said with disdain and ire, "or shall you leave me in the ocean where you found me?"  
"My child, it is only you I am thinking of."  
"My prince, that you could even think to let me go pierces my heart. Haril beat me because he knew I wanted you -- that I needed you. I loved you since the day I was drawn from the water into your vessel. I will not lie my prince, since my fate is determined, I love you and Yunt alike and it has torn my heart in two to have to have only one of you. But nothing I have done has been for position or even for susitence. I have pleased you because it is my deepest pleasure to do so. When I hear you laugh, my heart swells as if it would choke me. When you touch me, my blood rushes through my veins and seems to burn my skin. When I feel your breath and know you are about to touch your lips to mind, my very flesh throbs and prays." My breath came in short gasps and I could not help closing my eyes, seized as I was with a fierce longing to cry. 

He drew me to him rough and kissed me hard on the lips.

"I love you, child. I love you better than desire itself, and in a way that I had never before been capable of loving. If you and I could join together and spring forth life, I would implore the gods to make it so. But I need an heir, and I will not dishonor my new bride by so quickly leaving her bed afterward. Until a child is born, I must by duty and honor be focused on her."  
I felt in my heart that this was mostly true, but the passion for me also scared him. I knew that he wished to be emperor, and to do so he must please both those who followed the old ways and those who feared the Intoah. I guessed, and I think correctly, that to have me near him -- a child who so clearly held his lust -- was a detriment to his image in these changing times.  
I put my arms close around his neck and let my weight fall on him "do not send me away!" I begged.  
He held me tightly and chastely, more like a parent than he had ever been. "Yunt will take you, will he not?"  
"I do not know, my lord" I said between tears.  
"Of course he will. And that way you can stay here in the palace, which is a life that agrees with you."

And so I moved in with Yunt and his family, and slept mostly in the parlor with Hisill. These were not unpleasant nights, for he showed me in terms of both giving and receiving pleasure. There were also times that I joined him with Jeddy, sneaking out at night and meeting in the stables, and the three of us became inseperable in our hearts.

As for Yunt's wife, she treated me cooly but kindly. Yunt was shy about affection whenever his son was around, and since I was usually near his son, my relationship with Yunt became that of father and child rather than lover and beloved.

We took a horsed carriage to Irlik's wedding at a country palace beyond the walls. These kind of unguarded estates, said Hisill, were exactly the kind of noble who most feared and obeyed the Intoah. But he assured me that by strengthening his ties with such people, Irlik was ingratiating himself to important people.

I never saw the bride clearly, covered as she was by a veil of gold thread and because my seat was distant from the altar. The best seats were given to the emperor, an intensely fat man I had never laid eyes on before, and a contingent of deathly pale Intoah wearing all black.

Another couple of months passed uneventfully after this, and I grew to appreciate my relative freedom. Hisill never came upon me except when I showed him I was interested. We were friends first and lovers second. I felt like a free man, and the sensation excited me as well as at times made me feel incredibly lonely. Some nights I longed to approach Yunt with flirty eyes and have him take me first and think about my wellbeing second. But those days were over.

"Did you know that your father was once in love with me?" I boldly asked Hisill one night.  
"Yes," he said. "He was in love with me when I was younger, and other boys younger than you are now. You are too old for him now, but he will always care for you."  
So that was the mystery. My lengthening arms and longer face were my undoing. I wondered if the same was the case with the prince.  
"Will I get too old for you?" I asked.  
"I do not think so," Hisill said. "I have talked with Jeddy, and we shall both marry you."  
"Do the Intoah know of three boys marrying?"  
"No, but the emperor has many wives. Why shall we not all marry each other and live in harmony?"  
"You have the mind of a revolutionary," I replied.

Revolution was a term I had heard whispered as we hid outside the palace windows and listened to the advisors in the hallway where they thought they spoke in private. Such talk was quickly cut off, but it was ever present. And so the months of transquility slowly changed back into an era of tension. Every one who entered the main hall hurried back and forth rather than walking with the leisurely pace that the gardens invited. More and more days saw crowds gathering at the gate. Yunt would talk to the emperor during the day, but then have other secret meetings in the evening. One night he asked me if Hisill and I wanted to accompany him.

"This is an important night" is all he would say. We dressed in clothes that would not identify us as residents of the palace ground and slipped out of the palace walls not via the main gate but through a guard tower that Yunt had the keys too. We then made our way through the mostly empty bazaar and to the spot on the canal where we had taken a boat ride when I had first come to the city. A different boat was there now. It was a small cargo ship, the kind of vessel the canal had been designed to just barely be able to handle. Several men, seemingly out of nowhere, emerged from the shadows at a sign from him and began to unload it as quickly as they could.   
"What is it?" I asked.  
"It's wheat grain, isn't it?" Hisill said.  
"Yes," Yunt answered. "This is my army and my navy. My men in the south sneak into Caffree, across a border that when they were young was a mere stroll to see their sweetheart. They take grain, sometimes by the bag or sometimes only be the handful. Merchants I have known all my life collect it from them. Slowly it is consolidated until one ship risks bringing it here, where my friends will distribute it. If the gods will, that is. This is the first shipment of hopefully many."  
"But, will this feed the entire city?" I asked.  
"No," said Yunt. "Nor would I want it too. It can't be so much that the Intoah can easily track a loss in their inventory in Caffree or their sales here. But by bringing in what we can, we lessen the burden on our people and lessen the Intoah's grip on us." At that, one of the men gave some silent sign to Yunt that I did not catch. In an instant, the men were swallowed up by shadows again, each one presumably having orders of where to take the wheat.  
"It is done," Yunt said. "Let us return." It seemed clear that he hadn't actually needed to be here, but being the kind of man he was had wanted to oversee it himself.

By my thirteenth summer, I was so well established as a part of Yunt's household that all other lives were but a distant memory to me. Hisill and I, and Jeddy whenever he could be, were an unbreakable knot. Times of pleasure and intimacy were very different than they had once been. No longer did I kiss and caress in order to buy myself love and protection, but rather because I knew I was loved and treasured. That I had ever thought of lovemaking in any other way seemed alien to me.

So when Yunt approached me with a mission for me, it was the last thing I would have ever expected.  
"The emperor's favorite boy has died."  
"Hashleg?" I said.  
"Yes. Fell from one of the tallest trees while he was foolishly climbing."  
"I know Hashleg, my lord. Hashleg doesn't climb trees."  
"He is dead evenso." Yunt said. My face turned red. Was this another murder carried out by the allies of Irlik? To what end? "Boys are hard to find. Not without attacting the attention of the Intoah. The emperor is . . . desperate."  
I knew now what he was going to say, but I was angry at the suggestion and wanted to make it hard for him. "So you are going to give the emperor Hisill?"

Yunt was predictably taken aback by this. "No, child, no" he showed shock.  
"Why not?" I asked in sarcasm. "Hisill would make the perfect spy. He is both handsome and smart."  
Yunt was silent. I knew I had derailed his attempt at persuading me to take this well.  
"But he is your son, yes my lord? And I am . . . not."

"You are a little slut," Yunt said, my kind father figure viciously turning on me. I had no warning for this. Nothing he had ever said or done -- nothing -- could have prepared me. "You lust after any cock in your face. You are not a man, you are a little girl with a dick between your legs. My son has a lover, I know this, but he has discretion that you have never had. Tell me the name of a man you have not tried to bed?"

"Tell me the name of a boy you have not, fair captain!" I screamed at him "even down to your own son."  
"I was drunk and he rejected me, you miserable whore" he rebounded. "by which I knew he was destined for great things, for it was no small bravery of his to resist me. You have never shown wits nor strenth nor courage. Your lithe body is your only weapon, and you best use it soon or else you will end alone and uselss."

Knowing he had lost me, he turned and left. But he had one more blow to land. Having failed to persuade me himself, he sent for Irlik.

Irlik, who would no longer welcome me into his own. Irlik, who would not come to visit me, would come to persuade me to use my body as a . . . as a trap, I supposed. To gain some information or something worse? Either way, it was clear that I was a tool to them and always had been. A bit of clothing to throw aside when soiled, later only remembered when it was once again to be used. All the days I spent longing for either or both of them now sat in my stomach like a sickness, causing me to wretch. And this I could not tell Hisill, for he still loved his father and would not want to hear such things.

I would not be swayed his words, I told myself, but I could not stop myself from embracing and even kissing Irlik when I saw him walking toward me in the gardens. So much did I still love his visage that my storm of anger became a distant rumble in the sunshine of his presence.

"There are things afoot that cannot now be prevented," he said to me as we lay together. "And the only questions are those of amount. How long will it take and how many will die. By putting you in the bed of the emperor, we shall have ears and eyes as well as a voice to his most intimate moments. The Intoah are closing in on the wheat shipments. Yunt has had to suspend them, but it is too late. They are investigating who is behind it and it is only a matter of time before they demand the emperor turn over Yunt to them. You remember the Northfields. You rmeember Grantia, yes? You remember they have no mercy.  
"The emperor will turn over Yunt, that is without question. He has no will to oppose the Intoah. If Yunt is handed over to them, I will oppose the emperor publicly. I will let the people know who has been their secret friend and that the emperor is their enemy. Some troops will join me and some will join the emperor. There will be a war inside the capital, and the Intoah will gladly watch like vultures. 

"If the emperor is dispatched by a child however," my Prince Irlik continued, "a scared child who acted in fear against the mad cravings of an old monster, I will be hailed by all as the rightful heir. I will be able to protect Yunt. But this must occur before the Intoah demand his head."  
"You want me to kill the emperor?" I asked. "I thought you wanted me to become his boy."  
"No, water-seed. You have really never been anyone's but your own. But seek his approval as you once sought mine. You only need wait until you are alone with him. Then we will spirit you out of the palace along with Yunt and his son, my agents in the wide empire."  
"My lord," I said boldly. "Would you not rather let the palace guards kill me, so that I might not speak nor be recognized as one who once held your hand in the bazaar?"  
"You are smarter than Yunt believes you to be, acorn. Will you believe me if I give you my word that I would have you live? For the sake of our nights together?"  
"I do not know, my lord. But for the sake of our nights together I will do as you say." And this was not a lie, but it was not the entire truth. I also chose this path because it gave a chance of survival. If I were to refuse this thing, Yunt and Irlik would know they could not trust me and then my life would equally be in danger.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of childhood

I was presented to the Emperor dressed in the sheer pink fabrics I had seen the dancing boys wear. I wondered where they were now, and it occured to me that it was very possible that they were the last troupe of such boys there would ever be. That did not distress me, for I did not particular like them nor did they seem to particularly like what they did. Such was the fate of many. I held in my arms a basket of melons, a representation of virility as well as a cover. In the record which the Intoah would observe, I was simply the delivery boy and the gift was one of exotic fruit. No one actually thought this would deceive the Intoah, but it gave them an excuse to overlook the emperor's backward ways. The peace was built on allowing the highest members of society to go about their luxurious lifestyle unmolested.

The Emperor received me from his throne as he would receive any gift. His attendants told me to spin around, and then I was taken back through a tunnel to the grand apartments of the emperor, the secret world where only his those especially loyal to him were invited. A gated world within a gated world. 

I entered a large hall where the light shone in from windows high above, windows that were twenty feet above my head. Dozens of lamps and brightly covered walls obscfucated the truth that I had entered what was essentially a dungeon. Six elderly women, the wives of the emperor, stared at me from where they reclined on their sofas as young women massaged their scalps or back. The attendant who had led me here took my fruit basket.

"That is for the emperor himself," I cried out, worried. "There is a -- a trick I wish to show him."

"Come then, we will find a place for it." I followed the attendant and the precious fruit and went through a set of heavy curtains into another large room, also with high windows. This one had a dozen statues of boys lining the walls and in the middle, a giant bed. The attendant put the basket on the only other piece of furniture in the room, a small table.

The attendant then left me. It was up to me to now be able to please the emperor or be dismissed. When he came to see me.

I returned to the main room and spent a while simply being stared out at by the old women. I was relieved when a different attendant passed through the door and summoned me.

"The emperor wishes you to serve the evening meal," he said as he led me back through the tunnel. "You shall hold yourself erect, with head up and arms crossed, and to answer clearly and briefly any questions."  
The tunnel forked at a point I had not noticed from the other direction, and taking the new route we quickly ascended into a kitchen. Scooting past the crowd of chefs, we turned a corner and entered a grand open-air porch. The emperor was sitting on a low divan covered with purple silk. He was an old man, with white hair and white caterpillar eyebrows. White hair potruded from every part of him, out of his nostrils and his ears and even down his sleeves. He wore a loose blue garment that attempted and failed to hide his considerable girth. I had the ridiculous thought that perhaps a pistol would not even be able to reach the heart of one so large. I looked around when I had thought, in my anxiety ludicrously fearing that someone would hear my imagination. His eyes gazed carelessly at the pages of a small red book.  
He signed to me to come near to him. I kept my eyes focused on him as I walked across the room, though he did not look at me. When I came as close as I dared, I kneeled before him.  
"Is there anything you desire?" he asked nonchalantly.  
"I desire nothing, your majesty, except to please you."  
"That will change, boy. Living here, where there are no wants, people always want something." He sighed. He then simply continued to read. Not knowing what else to do, I simply stayed on my knees before him.  
Several minutes at least passed. I noticed the sun was setting and it was now in my eyes when it had not been before. Then behind me, I heard a man rush in to the room. It was Yunt.  
"The Intoah have returned, my majesty. They are docking now. They want you to speak with them on their ship."  
The emperor looked at Yunt and grimaced. He said in a hard dry voice. "Let them go to hell. If they like, I shall receive them here. Not in the throne room, but right here as I am. I am too tired to be anywhere else. I think I will sleep here tonight. Boy, where is my dinner?"

I returned to the kitchen and was presented with several plates of lamb and fruits and eggs and vegetables and sweets more suitable for children than leaders, and one by one carried them out to him. He had me arrange them around us, then he would point to one and I would hold it up to him while he ate from it. This went on for some time as the sky darkened. Torches were lit around us.

Yunt returned and told the emperor that the Intoah were in his throne room. The emperor again shouted "they can come in here, but I will damned if I am to move for those bastards!" I was surprised to hear these words, being as I had heard all my life how the emperor cowtowed to the Intoah. I hoped the meeting would not occur. If the Intoah were here to take Yunt into custody, all our plotting had been for nought.  
Yunt retreated again. I hoped he knew enough to hide himself.

"You know what I think, boy?" He said. "I think you are one of the last lucky ones alive. An orphan in the street is in danger. Scraping by every moment, when you live in luxury. I don't know if you like cock, but can we be men of honesty? The rich will always find a way to have their cock sucked by little boys. The Intoah says it doesn't happen among them, but that is bullshit. The difference is there are no laws to protect the boys. Everyone pretends the boys don't exist. So when they are no longer useful, they are just thrown away. Like my Hashleg was. I think the Intoah did it, because they don't like me to have nice things. They have an obsession with knowing who are other people are kissing. It's disgusting, really. My Hashleg never climbed trees. There is an Intoah spy somewhere in my palace. Is it you, boy?"

He looked straight at me for the first time.

"No, your majesty."

"Then why did you sneak a loaded pistol into my bed chambers?" He asked. I was caught off guard and almost fell over. 

"Ah yes," he continued. "The fat old emperor is not as dumb as he looks. Having been able to get my beloved Hashleg to betray me, The Intoah want to kill me and blame it on my new boy. Destroy the emperor and discredit our traditions of lovemaking all at once!"

"My majesty," I whimpered. I didn't have anything else to say. He held up a hand to silence me.

"It's no matter," he declared. "You shall not succeed, but I'm sure they will find someone else. I have half-a-mind to have you suck my cock in front of them when they come in. When slavery is done away with, a graver error will have been committed. Misery and whoring will be doubled, and the poor will have no hope. This is the way of the Intoah, and I was willing to let them have that miserable future as long as they let me have my dream of the past. But they took my Hashleg from me, that whining never happy boy who thought he was owed all things. I loved him and now I hate the world."

This was a revelation to me. If I survived the night, it might be useful to Irlik that the emperor himself was turning. But did Irlik really want an emperor that was sympathetic to his cause, or just to be emperor himself?

"So, boy. Will you plead for your life?"

"I have come to please you, my majesty. I neither apologize nor cower from that."

The emperor laughed. "Are you denying that you came to kill me?"

"I am not denying that the Intoah approached me and told me to do such a thing," I lied. "but it was never my intention, or else I would not have left the pistol off my person." In truth I didn't bring the pistol with me because I thought sooner or later we would be retiring to the bed, where I could shoot him unseen.

"Then what do you want, boy? Surely you aren't in love with this mountain of a man before you."

"My lord, when children are little they do not love beauty, for they are beauty. They do not love fragility, for they are fragile. We love protection, for we are vulnerable. We love strength, for we are weak. We love to be held, for we are alone."

"Spoken well, boy. My Hashleg never knew his own mind so well. If they come in and you are sucking my cock, they will probably kill both of us and simply make up a story. It is clear now they will not honor their promise to leave my household alone. What shall we do to save our lives, hmmm?"

I honestly did not know. I was miserable. My plan was discovered. I had been on my knees so long that they whelped out to me in pain. My life was more in danger than the emperors. If the Intoah came through the door and were able to convince him that they were not behind the pistol, my life would be forfeit. If the Intoah came in and the emperor defied them, the lives of everyone in the palace grounds might be over.

"Your majesty," I said. "Those who took your beloved wish to see you. Do not let them know how you despise them. Rather, speak sweetly to them and earn yourself time."

"No, no longer." The emperor retorted. "That is the way of the child. The child is helpless. He takes abuse and calls it love. It is not the fault of the child, for he has no other way to survive. It is cunning. But there comes a day to be a man, to spit the cock out of your mouth and demand dignity for who you are and not because of what you can give to those who will never treat you well."  
Yunt returned right at this moment. He was haggard, "Your majesty, the Intoah are coming to see you now." And then Yunt walked toward us. He stood next to me and pulled me up.   
"Why are you touching my boy, Yunt?" the emperor screamed.  
"He's not your boy, your majesty. He's my boy or he's his own." And with that Yunt pulled my own little pistol from the folds of his shirt and shot the emperor in the head.

The sound was as loud and close as thunder in my head, and Yunt had to steady me. Then he pulled me with him as we jumped off the porch and into the most private courtyard of the emperor. There was no way out of it without going through the emperor's apartments, those buildings with high windows. We hid in the bushes, unable to think of anywhere to go.  
"The Intoah are right behind us. I had to choke an attendant to get into the bed chamber and it took me a second to find this hidden among the fruit. The stupid old wives didn't help."  
"The Intoah, they did come because they discovered you?"  
"No, water-seed. They came for you."  
"What do you mean?"  
"Your name is Dalto Le Greyneck. Your a grandson to the king of the Intoah. Your father, their prince, was following up rumors of secret wheat fields. He came upon them near Grantia. Knowing the threat he posed, men from Northfields boarded his ship at night and killed him. They threw you overboard. Investigation of his death is what led to the destruction of the northfields. They thought you were dead too until Prince Irlik's wedding. Then one of them noticed he had no children. They checked around and sure enough found Irlik didn't have a son."  
"But the Intoah saw me and you told them I was his son."  
"Yes, and you are fair skinned. They put it together and tracked you down. You are very important to them."  
"But . . . but you could have let them have me. It wouldn't add to your danger."  
"No, water-seed. I couldn't." Yunt whispered. "I was wrong to say those things. All you have ever asked is for me to love you. No child is wrong to ask for that. I was wrong to put such a heavy cost on what I gave you."  
"How do we escape? In the morning, they will find us."

And that's when I heard the explosion.

The Intoah like to keep their ships offshore, away from prying eyes and savage hands. But in their rush, they sailed their strange metal boat all the way up the canal to the bazaar. And then they left it with only four guards while the important delegation from the king made their way to the impertinent emperor. Yunt had eventually persuaded the Intoah to state their business to him, and being so eager to retrieve me (especially as they had meticulously traced the route of my travels all the way to finding I was about to become a sex slave to their enemy) they shared with him what he had just told me. Once Yunt knew this, he rushed to Hisill. He told his son to inform Irlik not of the truth, but that all was lost and that revolution was our only hope. Irlik had been waiting with men near the ship since it had pulled in. Now they swiftly threw bags of gunpowder on to it and ignited them. Then the men sent out alarms to everyone in the capital known to support Irlik, and they marched toward the palace. The main gate would not open, but Hisill unlocked the guard tower and the makeshift army began to pour through the walls. The palace guard were in the process of searching for the assassin of their emperor and were in no position to decide if Prince Irlik had the right or not to enter the throne room at such a time. The Intoah delegation, being mostly one of diplomats, simply surrendered.  
Yunt and I watched as Prince Irlik and some of his followers entered the porch and found the emperor dead. Yunt threw the pistol into the bushes and stood up.  
"My prince," Yunt called. "I have the assassin." And he grabbed me and held me up.

"Is that a child?" Irlik called as we re-entered the porch.  
"An Intoah child, my lord" Yunt said.   
"Death to all Intoah" said several of the people behind Irlik.  
"Wait, good men," said Irlik. Then he looked at me and said "what do you have to say for yourself, Intoah child?"  
"I hate you all!" I screamed. And I meant it. So I was to be the one blamed after all? I tried to run but Yunt held me tight.  
"Kill the bastard!"  
"There will be no more bloodshed tonight!" Irlik demanded. "Minister Yunt, what do you think we should do?" It occured to me that this wasn't a plan after all. Irlik was following Yunt's lead, but was just as confused as I.  
"Let the Intoah know we have him, sire. Let them know we can kill him at any time."  
"They sent him to die!" a man demanded "they don't care about their own children!"  
"They care about this one. We have their prince."

And so the story that went back with the Intoah contingent, who were stuck as guests of the palace until another Intoah vessel could come retrieve them, was that I, Prince Dalto, was responsible for killing the emperor. This was a clear violation of the treaty and as new emperor, Irlik could quite reasonably and even mercifully demand that I be held as hostage -- whereas otherwise he would have had no choice but to send me back "home" to the Intoah. Meanwhile, my position as hostage meant that the Intoah king was quite motivated to see that I was well treated, which meant he had every reason to be humble when Irlik demanded that the treaty between the two people be renegotiated. And so Irlik became emperor and I became his hostage. I continued to live with Yunt and his wife and Hisill and at my request Jeddy was freed. He took his jewel and gave it to Yunt as a brideprice for Hisill. Yunt didn't understand this at all, but let Jeddy live with us and didn't ask what the three of us did at night. 

"You know, Dalto," Hisill said to me one night while the three of us lay on top of each other naked. "You will be king of the Intoah one day. What kind of king will you be?"  
"A good king" I said lazily.  
"Well, yes. But what world will you live in? The empire's or the Intoah? Whose lovemaking will you honor?"  
"When I am king," I answered slowly, giving it much thought. " I won't tell people how to love. Or who. But only that it must be love and not fear that drives them into beds. Just because a child cannot swim doesn't mean that he should give up himself to not be drowned."


End file.
